CONTENTS Case Studies:
Storm Surfers 140
Acknowledgements 4 Conspiracy 365 160
Biography 6 Britain from Above 172
Preface 10 Heroes 186
Distribution 22 dirtgirlworld 198
Concept 42 Reservoir Hill 214
Development 48 Wei is Tim 226
Financing 60 Alpha 07 238
Pre-Production 74 Jeff Gomez 248
Production 90 Highrise 260
Post-Production 112 Henry Jenkins 270
Marketing 120 Recommended Reading 284 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Firelight Productions acknowledges the financial assistance and support of Screen Australia and Screen NSW. A special thank you to Matthew Deaner, Matthew Hancock, Fiona Cameron and Georgie McClean from Screen Australia, and Tania Chambers, producer and former CEO of Screen NSW.
Firelight gratefully acknowledges the following writers, directors, producers, screen practitioners and All Media pioneers for the case studies:
Linda Klejus, Michael Brindley, Mark Shirrefs, Anthony Mullins and Peter Jenetsky for Conspiracy 365. Kirsty Hunter for Britain from Above. Cate McQuillen for dirtgirlworld. David Stubbs and Thomas Robins for Reservoir Hill. Guy Gadney and Jennifer Wilson for Wie is Tim? Sebastian Hunerfeld for Alpha 0.7. Jeff Gomez for A Case Study on Producing Transmedia Bibles. Katerina Cizek for Highrise and Henry Jenkins. The journey on Storm Surfers 3D with Ester Harding, Justin McMillan, Christopher Nelius and the rest of the team informed much of the key learnings in this book.
Thank you also to Amanda Keeling for research assistance and in particular a thank you to Evelyn Saunders for her in-depth analysis, research and co- writing contribution.
We are greatly appreciative for the support of Deluxe Australia, DDP TIM WINTON’S THE TURNING ELENA KATZ CARLTON, VIC Studios, Madman Entertainment and Metro Screen for the print run of the book.
My creative, business and life partner Ellenor Cox and my wonderful, We’re a leading independent distribution and rights management company inspiring and fun daughter Elsie Lyla make it all possible. helping producers find audiences across multiple platforms. We work with the © Firelight Productions 2013 best established and emerging talent to tell stories with the biggest wow factor.
madman.com.au/incinemas MARCUS GILLEZEAU EVELYN SAUNDERS
In 2010 Evelyn studied Multiplatform Content Production at the AACTA and Emmy® award winning producer, executive producer and AFTRS; collaborated on Lance Weiler’s socially focused transmedia entrepreneur Marcus Gillezeau is the CEO of Firelight Productions, a project Robot Heart Stories in 2011; and for the past two years has Sydney based film and television company specialising in All Media lectured in storyworld creation for transmedia iterations for both drama, documentary and 3D production. documentary and foundation courses at the AFTRS. Marcus has over 25 years experience in the film and TV industry and has delivered prime time television to all the major Australian She has experience in production, script and story departments networks and notable international broadcasters such as Discovery for film and TV. Evelyn has researched crime, military, hospital and Channel, National Geographic, ZDF, 3Net and Sky3D. environmental storylines for documentaries, feature films, adult and children’s television drama as well as educational, entertainment and Whilst Marcus is best known for the documentary feature Storm infotainment programs. Surfers 3D and the all media drama Scorched, his films have screened in 52 festivals worldwide, garnered 28 major international and Her roles include that of storyliner, script editor and writer for adult 1/2 domestic industry awards and consistently been critically acclaimed hour drama, children’s drama, education and infotainment programs as industry game changers – particularly in the area of All Media. and she has worked as an external reader for the NSW-FTO (feature films). Since 2009 Evelyn has developed multiplatform concepts for In 2004 Marcus published Hands On: A Practical Guide to Production web, mobile and live action role playing experiences. and Technology in Film, TV and New Media and has subsequently facilitated and spoken at many industry events and workshops. He has also published extensively and contributed to industry publications.
He is currently on the board of Television Sydney and was President of Metro Screen from 2007-2010. Marcus has a Masters in Media Arts Production from UTS and is currently completing a Masters in Screen Arts Business at AFTRS...... CREATE YOUR VISION Draw on our extensive experience and resources to tell your story. Access funding and development, professional equipment and facilities, industry training, digital labs, broadcast opportunities and MELBOURNE SYDNEY networking events. [email protected] [email protected] T +61 3 9251 1600 T +61 2 9429 6500
DDPSTUDIOS.COM.AU : @DDP_STUDIOS metroscreen.org.au PREFACE Technology, Story and All Things Digital Hands On is a life long project for me. It began when I was 14 years old and bought my first Super 8 camera to shoot a documentary about street protests. (I still haven’t quite finished that project… one day!) The following year I left school with a single ambition: I wanted to make films.
I was lucky enough to be selected for the North Sydney Technical College film course when I was 15 years old and so began my training in screen technologies. Fast forward to 1993 when I found myself working at the Australian Museum in their Audio Visual department asking if I could research the new digital video technologies. It was a great assignment and I discovered a raft of soon to be released non-linear editing technology and this thing called the “Internet”. The world was about to change.
Within just two years screen production was transformed. By 1995, we had Avid editing systems, the first digital cameras were being released and the Internet was becoming ubiquitous. At 25 I had the opportunity to take over the management of Sydney’s first boutique digital post-production house. I even convinced my entire course around my paper I realised there was a real thirst for girlfriend Ellenor Cox, to come and help me manage this exciting practical, hands on information coming from the perspective of a project. We’ve been married and working together ever since. screen practitioner at the coal face of production.
It was around this time that the potential to stream video over the In 2004 I published the next iteration; Hands On – A practical guide Internet was emerging and the word ‘convergence’ first entered to production and technology in Film, TV and New Media. The book the language of film and TV. The concept of a range of screen is a straight-out ‘how to’ aimed at emerging screen practitioners based entertainment media being produced and delivered digitally that has loads of technical and theoretical advice. The book was a to homes, work, and on mobile devices was becoming a genuine great success and ten years later people tell me they are still using possibility. It was an exciting concept that I knew I had to pursue. it as a reference.
Less than three years later in 1999 I found myself in the hold of In 2009, we won the International Digital Emmy Award for Best a small 16th century tall ship in the middle of the Timor Sea with Fiction for our All Media drama production Scorched that screened a merry band of sailors and scientists. Together with my small on the Nine Network and internet publisher Ninemsn. Soon production team, we shot, cut and delivered over the Internet a afterwards, we found ourselves pitching a new drama series with 30 part web series, along with a Captain’s journal and a one hour an All Media wrap-around not dissimilar to what we’d just done. prime-time television documentary Little Dove Big Voyage. The We had assumed that since we’d won the most prestigious award project further evolved into a rich, interactive DVD and a broadband in the world for a multi platform delivery that it would be easier to Flash website. We had delivered our first All Media project. convince network executives to invest in an All Media production. It wasn’t. There were still the same issues of concern around how to determine the value of the ‘other’ content being created outside Hands On – Sixteen Years in the Making of the primary property.
Hands On first came to life in 1996 when Sonja Armstrong, Project I knew it was time for a new Hands On so producers could better Manager at the Australian Film Commission asked me to write a articulate in their proposals their ambition to produce and deliver a short five-page paper on the new digital video camera and editing genuine All Media project. technologies. The aim of the paper was to assist documentary makers and short filmmakers with gaining a better understanding of the practical requirements for shooting and editing with DV.
I sat down to write five pages and when I got up from the desk discovered I’d written fifty. Hands On was borne and published and soon became a popular paper amongst filmmakers and in film schools. When I learnt that one university had based an
12 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Preface firelight 13 Hands On – All Media Producing INTRODUCTION
Hands On – All Media Producing is a compendium of tips, advice and experiences for producers and filmmakers. All Media – What is it? When I set out to write this publication in 2011, I was embarking on There is a wide range of terms used to describe the delivery of the production of our biggest project to date: Storm Surfers 3D. It original stories across platforms. Recently transmedia has come was delivered as a 3D movie, a four-part 3D TV series, a 20 part web into use. The terms Multi-platform and cross-platform have been series, an app, game, eBook, soundtrack album and rich media around for some time and are used by ABC and SBS. Innovation is website. …Yep, all of that, all in one go. Much of this publication used by the screen agencies and describes well the desire of those draws on our experience making Storm Surfers, so the information organisations to get innovative project submissions. Another term is current and hopefully relevant to your own endeavours. used by broadcasters to describe the commissioning approach was 360 Commissioning. However this terms seems to be less We have also conducted a series of case studies on All Media commonly used now. New Media is rarely used now, yet the term projects produced by a range of production companies and people digital is still used in many instances. working in this space. To give you insight into the successes as well as the pitfalls, we’ve interviewed some of the world’s most In some respects, all of these terms are aptly suited for their intended celebrated practitioners as well as some of the bravest. The case use and are adequate descriptions in terms of their meaning in a studies delve into the issues inherent in All Media production, as practical sense. However, for the purpose of this publication, we well as some tricks of the trade. will be using the term All Media.
Since our first All Media production in 1999, we have always All Media literally represents the notion that a story can be told pushed to be at the leading (and often bleeding) edge of multi- across any media: that is, print, TV, radio, apps, game consoles, platform delivery. Every project we’ve produced this way has been online, mobile, theatrical release, live events and more. The term hugely rewarding and definitely paid dividends. therefore liberates the original content creator from the constraints of the heritage, single platform delivery model. Our goal in writing Hands On is to share what we’ve learnt over the last fifteen years and to hopefully encourage you to make your next All Media projects represent the future of the screen industry. The project an All Media production. entire cultural landscape is changing in response to the growing integration of content and brands across media platforms and the Marcus Gillezeau (Jillezo) increasingly prominent roles that consumers are playing in shaping November 2013 how they want to be entertained. That is, anywhere, anytime, on any device.
14 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Preface firelight 15 The Overall Aim Producers are seeking a clear guide as to what is best practice in All Media production, who to team up with, what new skills Screen practitioners, producers, directors and writers have sets are required, what are appropriate budgets and time frames, traditionally developed and delivered projects to one of two what are the new deliverables and how they should be costed and platforms - television or cinema. produced. They also need a means by which to ‘test’ concepts and scripts before they commit to developing them. We have now entered a new era where All Media production will become the norm. The fundamental creative basis upon which Producers and content creators often find it difficult to determine stories have been told for thousands of years is being challenged. if an All Media project proposal has the right elements to be Form, genre, structure, format and duration are rapidly evolving a successful property due to the vagaries of terminology, the and developing and in doing so, are opening up huge possibilities speed with which new platforms are opening up and the lack of and new opportunities. information on what constitutes a successful All Media production.
Conversely, these same opportunities present enormous This publication aims to help fill in some of the gaps by providing challenges for producers as they grapple with financing structures tips, advice and experiences from the front line of All Media and revenue models that will work in the new landscape of All production. Combined with a series of case studies and supporting Media production. material, it should go some way to helping you plan, finance and produce your next All Media production.
Why We Are Sharing This Information
Screen content creators are keen to see their projects leveraged across all available platforms, but few have the knowledge or resources to determine if the project will work on other platforms or media and how to implement and fully maximise the digital rights and revenue models available in these new areas.
Screen practitioners including writers, directors and producers are hungry for information on how to develop, produce and finance All Media productions. Broadcasters, funding agencies and distributors are all calling for screen content producers to develop the multi-platform opportunities for their projects from the outset, yet there is a dearth of information on how to go about doing it.
16 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Preface firelight 17 THE FIRELIGHT PRODUCTION MODEL
Origins of the Model
The Firelight Production Model was first developed by my partner Linear Model for Producing Ellenor Cox and I when we started our first production company in 1995. It was a simple idea that evolved more by accident than by design. We were walking along a beach on the South Coast discussing each phase of production. Up until that point, I had tracked projects on a straight line from concept through to distribution. That is, you dream up the idea for the film then way down the track you think about distributing it.
As I was drawing this idea in the sand with my toe, I drew a circle and stumbled across an approach to production that has been the basis of our approach to making film and TV ever since. The start of the circle had the Concept phase, the end of the circle the Distribution phase. The two had met up - with Concept and Distribution right next to each other.
We realised a very simple principle. If the concept was right, and we got the distribution right, we would find our audience and produce a successful project and get the chance to make another film or TV project.
Firelight Model - A non-linear approach with Concept at the beginning of production cycle.
18 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Preface firelight 19 How the Firelight Production Model Works Similarly during Development, you can look at the Marketing phase and identify the needs of the campaign to promote iterations that In Hands On - All Media Producing, we have decided to reproduce might include an app, web series and online interactive elements the model with Distribution as the first phase of the production to name a few. To determine the budget for Financing, you’ll work cycle. We have done this because it is perhaps the most important through the other phases to establish the costs of Pre-Production, phase when determining what you are going to be producing with Production and Post-Production of your deliverables, as well as your All Media production. We believe there’s a co-dependent their marketing and on-going distribution and roll-out costs. relationship between Concept and Distribution and the two should always be considered together to attain full creative effect and In essence, the model works as a great visual tool to ensure you maximise returns. Whilst Concept (that all important nugget of are always cross referencing each phase of production and testing an idea) will always be foremost in your minds, it is Distribution its needs creatively and operationally against the other phases (the media across which you’ll be delivering your properties and of production. It facilitates checking back to the core concept to to whom), that will determine the various iterations of your All ensure you’re maintaining the integrity of your vision whilst creating Media components. relevant, integrated All Media properties.
As you can see from the circular graphic, the key creatives, producers or production company occupy the middle pod. As you move from phase to phase, always consider the middle pod in relation to these phases. Check the project’s key parameters against the existing skill sets of the key creatives and the aims and objectives of the business as a whole. Reflection upon these elements will also help identify the skill sets and combinations of skill sets you’ll require when appointing other creatives at the various stages of the project’s life.
At the Concept phase, you look at Distribution and determine who you think your key audience might be and on what platforms the final assets might be delivered. The attributes of each platform will subsequently influence the kind of experience you deliver on those platforms (more about this in the Adaptation section of the Distribution chapter).
New Firelight model - with Distribution at beginning of production cycle.
20 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Preface firelight 21 DISTRIBUTION INTRODUCTION
In this chapter, we outline a wide range of tips, advice and experiences in Distribution that should help as a guide in the Concept and Development phases and assist as a counterpoint Audiences For All Media Content...... 25 for when you are marketing your primary property and the various Transitioning Audiences Across Platforms...... 26 iterations of your storyworld. Bridging Campaigns...... 28
Teasing, Not Spoiling Story...... 28 The idea is to help open up the possibilities beyond just the TV and
What Is... A Wrap-Around?...... 29 big screen of where your All Media project can be seen, engaged with, monetised and promoted. We believe that when you are Selling All Media Content...... 30 working the concept up, it’s important to be thinking about what’s Working with the Distributor or Broadcaster...... 31 possible and asking important questions around which platform Distribution by Platform...... 32 the project might be viewed, experienced or interacted with; how Broadcast: Engaging the Audience...... 34 you might expand the storyworld or; how you might tell the story
Film Distribution...... 35 in a different way.
Producer/Cast Collaboration on All Media Roll Out...... 37 Until recently, we had always approached production from the Primary Property...... 38 Concept phase first as the story is the most critical factor in Life Beyond the Initial Roll-Out...... 41 producing any project across All Media. If the story is weak it doesn’t matter how big the budget is or how many different iterations of AUDIENCES FOR ALL MEDIA CONTENT the project are delivered across how many platforms as there is nothing that will save the project and engage the audience. As Producers, we often ask ourselves the big question: “Is there an However, when we started to work on this publication, we audience for what I’m producing?” With all the effort of managing increasingly realised that Distribution is the real key to ensuring a an All Media team, of involving them in the development and project is successful. Why? Because this is where the audience is creation of the different iterations, along with the cost in production, found. This is where the audience will engage, download, watch, marketing and publicity - it’s a reasonable question. In nearly every buy a ticket, interact, recommend and play. If there is no audience case the answer is “Yes, absolutely.” out there for your story and you can’t find a way of getting that audience to engage with your project, it doesn’t matter how good One of the key objectives when producing an All Media project is the story is, it simply won’t succeed. to increase your audience for the primary property whilst garnering an audience for the wrap-around properties. By doing this you are increasing the awareness of your ‘brand’.
Whilst the effort in producing an All Media project may seem daunting, difficult to manage and expensive, there is a flow on effect between the properties that will, over time, increase the audience, number of views, ratings, box office return and number of downloads. In the same way that delivering a TV show with no on-air promotion or marketing is unlikely to find an audience, delivering an eBook for a project with no other properties, social media campaign or marketing, is likely to result in it getting lost in the online app stores.
There’s a lot of noise and competition in the marketplace, so the more assets you can create to engage your target market so that they can find your content and share their experiences to a broader audience again, the greater your chances of success in driving traffic to your principal property.
24 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Distribution firelight 25 TRANSITIONING AUDIENCES All Media campaigns where you might be building an audience on Facebook, then encouraging them to download an app or ACROSS PLATFORMS check out a webisode you have produced. There’s not always an immediately trackable transition across platforms, however that Producers are often hoping they will get an audience to migrate doesn’t mean that it won’t grow over time. from one platform to the other with a call to action. However a call to action has to appeal to its target audience either because the audience has a vested interest in the topic or because they perceive a reward such as kudos, increased knowledge or something of A Firelight example: material value. Migrating audiences
We promoted the free version of the Storm Surfers game before the screening of the film in the cinema, however Call to action: the audience didn’t download the game that night. The bump in downloads occurred the day after. We then Audience = 100,000 > 1% migration: Audience = 1000 saw a 10% conversion rate with users downloading the > Engagement > 10% = 100 audience engagements premium paid version of the game.
There seems to be a simple rule of thumb, a 1% rule, where the maximum migration you can get from one platform to another is around 1% at best. Whilst this seems like an incredibly low level of migration, the flow on effect from that audience sharing their experience will increase the result exponentially.
This flow on effect occurs when the audience engages by ‘clicking through’, commenting or digging deeper. The rate of conversion for engagement is often around 10% of the audience who migrated.
It’s important to note that transition might not necessarily occur on the day, but the following day or days after broadcast or a screening, when people have been talking about it through the media or on social media. This principal extends to long-running
26 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Distribution firelight 27 BRIDGING CAMPAIGNS the stories and the endings. There is no such thing as a spoiler in that case. Everyone has read the book. But fans in their millions still go to see the films. Bridging campaigns are often employed to engage a drama series or soap opera’s key fan base between series and seasons. These bridging experiences can take the form of a single web series however often it’s an entire campaign that’s delivered across A Firelight example: multiple platforms. It has to be treated the same way as you would Teasing not spoiling to re-launch the next series of a soap and may utilise billboards or even sky-writing like with the Dutch “Wie is Tim?”. (See case study) Storm Surfers: Our fans, if you give them five seconds of the fantastic wipeout in a webisode or teaser, they replay There is clear evidence that if you engage people in a more it over and over. They never tire of it. dynamic, interactive campaign that includes the whole storyworld that you’ve rolled out and that still works within the storyworld of So we wondered if they’d think, “I’ve watched this on a the soap opera or drama series, that your core fan base is going tiny little screen on my phone, I’m not going to go and to get really excited and probably tell everybody to tune in for the see it on a 30 foot screen at the cinema IN 3D...” launch of the next season.
Are you kidding? Of course they wanted to see it in 3D on the big screen! In fact, they wanted to see it even more!
TEASING, NOT SPOILING STORY
Questions or concerns are often raised about delivering All Media content that could be seen as spoilers. Your fan base wants WHAT IS... A WRAP-AROUND? to see the killer moment, the killer wave, the big VFX scene... because that’s what excites them and makes them want to go and see the film. We use the term wrap-around to describe when you have a primary property, be it a movie or a TV show, and you literally wrap around You’re not giving the whole story away. You’re giving a taste of the it a storyworld and a range of assets that are then delivered across story. Clearly you don’t give away the ending, but you can give different media and platforms. An example is a TV drama series away other stuff. You certainly don’t give away the boring bits (e.g. with a web series, an app and a game ‘wrapped’ around it, i.e. a dropped scenes) otherwise you’ll send the wrong signal to your set of adapted stories that all speak to the core storyworld. audience. Take Harry Potter for instance, everybody already knows
28 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Distribution firelight 29 SELLING ALL MEDIA CONTENT WORKING WITH THE DISTRIBUTOR OR BROADCASTER ON THE DISTRIBUTION Your primary objective should be to have the All Media wrap- OF THE ALL MEDIA ASSETS around support your primary property to make it as successful as possible. Your secondary objective will then be to make additional income out of these iterations. An issue that comes up with Distribution—that ultimately, should be dealt with back at the Financing stage when you’re doing the One of the things we have discovered with All Media delivery and contracting—is between the exploitation of traditional and digital distribution is that charging for content such as apps does not media rights. Traditional rights are far more valuable, and people generally work. People are not willing to pay for additional content pay a lot more money for them and rightfully want to protect them as they perceive it to be marketing the main property. and the audience they need to get an return on investment (ROI).
There are windows of opportunity to monetise content through We have found when we are trying to deliver the All Media products revenue sharing on video platforms such as YouTube, partnering there can be a tension with the broadcaster or distributor around with advertisers or selling short form content to subscription TV whether you’re cannibalizing the audience by giving them too channels. However, these sorts of deals are not easy to make a lot much content. We try to ensure that we have the right to be able a money from and instead are more a bonus if they happen. to distribute the All Media products as the producer without any encumbrances. When you can start to make money out of the All Media assets, is if the project is a raging success and you have a hit. You can We often find ourselves telling the broadcaster or distributor that start to produce products such as merchandising or a 2.0 version they would be insane not to want us to be creating all these other of your game. You might even be able to create a magazine that fabulous products. It’s free publicity. It’s great marketing. The way has a subscriber-base that’s delivered online or in print such as that we’ve overcome this issue sometimes is to kind of a ‘crash Top Gear. and crash-through’.
One area that has a been a pleasant surprise for us has been our ability to sell the webisodes we have produced for Storm Surfers. In one case, an advertiser was looking for cool content to help promote their brand and embedded ten of our webisodes into a pop-up banner ad. It was a very successful campaign delivering over 1.5m views of the videos and we were paid quite well for the content.
30 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Distribution firelight 31 DISTRIBUTION BY PLATFORM eBooks
eBooks are a rapidly growing market with over 50% of books Apps being bought as eBooks for e-readers. E-readers are currently the primary platform for books as they are cheap, light and the batteries last forever. Tablets are also used for eBooks and can Apps are now very cheap to produce and are becoming an essential deliver a much richer experience for the reader than an eBook. part of any All Media delivery. For as little as $2000 you can produce They have more sophisticated interface, quality colour screens and an app that acts like a simple website that will carry information are more powerful in computing terms allowing greater interactivity. about the project, the storyworld, when the show is being released, Tablets are enabled for apps, where as e-readers are only for page and have links through to your other All Media platforms such as turn books. your website, the network website or the cinema to buy tickets.
We have produced a very rich media eBook for our franchise Storm At the other end of the spectrum, you can spend $100,000 plus on Surfers - Mission Diaries that includes loads of stills, articles, videos a highly sophisticated app that is a full blown multi-level game with and links to other content. We found that we struggled to get 3D graphics and loads of bonus content, back-end leader board significant downloads. Our theory is that people who own tablets database systems and monetisation tools. are mainly using them as mini computers to do emails, surf the net and watch videos whilst travelling. On the plane I have seen people If you’re distributing an app, it’s very easy to deliver across Android on their tablet close their email, then watch a film, before turning and the Apple iOS platform. Accommodating different screen sizes the tablet off and picking up a print magazine. is also less of a problem now than it used to be. However the digital production house you work with has to be up to speed when it comes to updating your app to make sure it works properly across Games all of the Android platforms and the iOS platform. You also need to have budgeted for this. The games market has exploded since the introduction of smart phones. The ‘casual’ gamer can be just about anyone, not just There’s a basic rule with trying to get people to download your app a ‘gamer’ or person who is a dedicated user of games. This has where if you can get in the top 10 there’s a kind of snowball effect opened up a huge market and alot of opportunity for producers to and you’re going to get lots of downloads. There’s a few things you extend their storyworld across to a game at a relatively low cost. can do to be pushed into that top 10 and convincing the editors You can spend as little as $5,000 on a basic game for smart phones of the online app stores to put you in the top 10 editor’s picks is a delivered as an app using software such as Unity. We produced a good start. You could also woo influential bloggers to test your app great little game for a documentary we did for Discovery Channel and talk about it, or engage in concerted marketing activities to get called Rocket Compulsion for $25,000. your app into the top 10. Rocket Compulsion Game: https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/rocket- compulsion/id432034672?mt=8
32 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Distribution firelight 33 Console games is an exciting space, but you will need a big budget FILM DISTRIBUTION to get into production. The introduction of the Screen Australia Interactive Game Fund should provide opportunities for production companies and game producers to team up on projects based on significant Australian owned franchises. Producer And Theatrical Distributor Collaboration On The All Media Roll-Out
One of the things that we try to do is work as closely as possible with our theatrical distributor on the All Media roll out. One of the BROADCAST: ENGAGING THE AUDIENCE issues that comes up frequently for producers however, is that the Distributor is reticent to commit to how much money they’re going to spend on the marketing, and therefore, what the nature of the There’s a lot of opportunity to engage with the audience during marketing campaign is going to be, until they see a cut of the film. the broadcast with certain forms, particularly if you’re in factual entertainment. The most common form is second screen There’s an enormous risk involved in the marketing P&A (print and interactivity via SMS voting, Twitter and Facebook and certainly advertising) campaign for a film. What you need to do is try and gives the impression of a faster result than the ‘red button’ on your get the distributor to be sitting at the table right from the early remote control. development or financing stage. Try to have them involved with the publicity from Pre-Production onwards and make sure that you In terms of the effort or focus that should go into genuine interactive have your own publicist speaking to their publicist. TV, we feel it’s important to remember the majority of television viewing is still for straight out entertainment. This is especially so It’s important to have an understanding of what the distributor is with the growing market in high budget HBO style drama that is proposing to do in marketing at different levels. Even if they’re not more akin to watching a movie at home. willing to commit to a budget, you’ve got to find out that if they are planning to spend $250,000 on P&A – what will they do? What will Interaction with specialist factual is probably at its best on Blu-Ray they do if they spend $1m or $3m on P&A? or DVD as an additional feature, where you can drill into a whole bunch of additional content. The more you understand what they do at each level, the more that you can ensure that the All Media wrap-around that you’re One of the most successful examples involves interaction with a creating is going to work in an integrated way with what the live audience around a political issue, such as Q&A on ABC TV distributor is doing. in Australia, that also facilitates the TV audience tweeting in real time. It makes it a richer experience, but it’s also a bit like talk-back radio, where people are interested in the other audience members’ opinions and they like to debate those issues.
34 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Distribution firelight 35 We have found one of the key things to ensure a smooth collaboration, is to agree on the positioning of the film and that it is discussed from an early stage, revisited and potentially adjusted A Firelight example: throughout the production and marketing. Interactive Experiences
There is scope to create fun interactive experiences in Producer and Cinema Exhibitor Collaboration on theatres by providing exclusive content that can only be the All Media Roll-out downloaded in the theatre where the film is playing or is going to play. In-theatre marketing is still one of the We believe there will increasingly be a more direct connection most powerful forms of advertising for your film. We did between producers and cinema exhibitors. As producers seek to an experiment with Storm Surfers where we set up an improve returns to their investors, they will be seeking ways to be in-theatre free Wi-Fi that allowed patrons to log on to the involved in the strategy and management of the theatrical release internet for free. When they clicked yes, they got a pop- of their film, rather than leaving it entirely to the distributor. As such, up page on their phones that had links to the upcoming the All Media Campaign becomes a critical part of the marketing films in that theatre and to the links to download the free of the film and the producer will be able to work closely with the Storm Surfers app. exhibitor to ensure that they can reach their target audience as directly as possible.
An exhibitor has a powerful tool at their disposal; a fantastic database of the people that come in to their cinemas and buy tickets. The most successful independent theatres engage directly PRODUCER / CAST COLLABORATION ON ALL with their core audience in their neighbourhood to get them to their MEDIA ROLL-OUT theatres to see movies. If you can tap this database through your digital media outlets such as your website and app, you will be If you can get the talent involved in the All Media roll out, it’s brilliant able to market directly to your fan base that you have built over the and it makes a massive difference. If you’ve got a long running life of the project. drama series, you’re going to want to use main cast or supporting cast and their characters in the All Media roll out. It can generate a really big bounce in your engagement rates.
When it comes to big name actors, it’s tough because they’ve got very demanding schedules and they’re expensive, but you can ask them to do really simple things like Tweet for example, which works for everyone as most actors have significant fan bases. Make sure
36 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Distribution firelight 37 that with those tweets they’ve got the URL for your website, e.g. Revenue Share with Online Video Platforms “Hey everyone, Storm Surfers is really cool www.stormsurfers. com/buyticket” Click. It goes straight to that page and boom! You One of the things about revenue sharing of advertising with will sell more tickets. your video content is the returns are extremely poor for content creators. If you have really popular video content that gets 30-20 million views and you only get paid $20,000-$30,000 by the video platform it will result in you feeling like you’ve been ripped off. And you have been ripped off. PRIMARY PROPERTY If you could walk into a network today and say, “I guarantee you 20 million viewers over the next 20 episodes of my series,” they would Digital Distribution and Monetisation hand you cheque for $10m on the spot. Let’s say we halve that because maybe the advertising is less valuable on a video platform compared TV, that’s still $5m. Ultimately, video platforms can’t be Digital distribution of your primary property offers a plethora of out there charging a CPM (cost per thousand viewers) that is $20 ways to monetise your content. For example you can put ads and returning $1 to the content creators; particularly not when your in front of your film or TV show and there are all sorts of video- terms are meant to be a 50-50 revenue share. on-demand (VOD) and subscription-video-on-demand (SVOD) opportunities. SVOD and subscription platforms like Netflix will pay a lot of money up front now-a-days. Releasing Content Across Global Platforms
You can make some really decent sales in this space and you can There’s a lot of concern around this area, particularly for the also do pre-sales so you can actually bring money to the table for networks or studios in other territories who have put up pre-sales your production budget. It is possible to negotiate a window with for your film or TV program when you are proposing to release your them where you do a ‘day and date’ release for your movie and it All Media content globally. Their concerns will include ensuring that goes out on SVOD at the same time. the project is positioned properly, that you don’t deliver a spoiler in story terms and that you don’t generate press in key outlet too early. If you write a list, track every single way you can possibly monetise your product and you have the resources to explore these options, The release of content that has been geo-blocked or the release you could do pretty well out of it. of content globally is frequently counter-intuitive to the traditional heritage media release models. In many cases far too many risk factors have been placed across the top of the release of All Media content that are unwarranted.
38 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Distribution firelight 39 In our experience we have never found the release of webisode LIFE BEYOND THE INITIAL ROLL-OUT content to be detrimental to the delivery and release of the primary property. That said, it is important to think through the specifics of each marketplace. An important consideration when producing All Media assets is they can and should have a life beyond the initial roll out and campaign around the project. The website, web series, eBook and app will be available and able to be used by distributors and A Firelight experience: Form, networks globally as the project goes into its global release cycle. Format and Strategy As a producer, we have found that buyers get really excited about the additional assets that we bring to the table. In most instances, A classic example was with Storm Surfers when were they do not have the resources themselves to exploit them in their determining the best time to release the “How to surf a particular territory, but it is possible as the producer to work with wave” series on the web. them by understanding their schedule and to help promote the release or transmission. For the Australian market we decided not to deliver it before the movie because it was presented direct to Many producers would suggest that this is not their responsibility camera by the talent and our core audience, who were and in most cases it isn’t worth the effort, however it has had familiar with the Discovery Channel TV series, may have several beneficial results for us. We get a bump in interest for the become confused. We didn’t want them to think the brand that helps build the project over time; it’s helped us get movie was going be an instructional video! repeat business and it has led to sales in other territories.
We might have been paranoid, we were probably wrong, but didn’t want to take the risk. So that’s why we produced a 10 X 3min Profile series instead, because the profile series was talking about the characters in the film and making of the film.
40 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Distribution firelight 41 CONCEPT INTRODUCTION The Concept phase is always one of the most exciting stages in a project. Anything is possible. There are no limitations to how you tell the story, the budget, the cast, the locations or duration. Once you have decided that your concept is worth taking forward, it is time to consider the other phases of production with Distribution Creating All Media Content...... 44 being the most important. If there is no audience for the project, Adaptation...... 45 there will be no finance and there will be no production.
Summary...... 47 The term “All Media” says it like it is; it takes the story of the primary property and enables you to explore that story across all the other media be it radio, television, film, novels, comic books, games, apps etc. The term helps remove any confusion about platforms, the definitions of which can vary quite wildly.
One of the great things about an All Media approach to production is you have the chance to expand the scope of how you reach your audience. You might find them through a web series, a game, a graphic novel, by making a documentary about the true story of the main character or through a series of articles about the issue. By their storyworlds (i.e. they have fantastic journeys and take great testing your concept against all the possibilities in Distribution you actions within those stories) then it should be capable of working will begin to find your audience and have a much better chance of across all platforms and All Media. moving to the Development phase.
Importantly, consideration for all the phases of production should also be considered such as how you might finance the project, who the development team might be and where and how you can ADAPTATION shoot it. It’s about using the model in a non-linear way.
You treat the notion of All Media as the adaptation of that storyworld across platforms. In the same way that novels are written with an entire storyworld and are adapted for the screen, you can also CREATING ALL MEDIA CONTENT take a story – a primary property - that is being delivered as a TV show or a TV series and say, “Okay, how do we adapt this to other platforms?” A good All Media project is one where there’s a storyworld that’s capable of being expanded and capable of growing over time. The term “adaptation” is used because you’re not simply picking up that story and repeating it on another platform, you’re adapting All genres can work as an All Media project. That said, certain it to that platform in a way that utilises the platform’s unique genres work better than others. According to transmedia guru and qualities to best deliver the story. The result is an iteration or a author Henry Jenkins, science fiction and childrens are two areas number of iterations of the storyworld; elements in the principal in mainstream production that demonstrate the effective use of property that either haven’t been explored or drilled down into; that All Media storytelling techniques. In our opinion romantic comedy can be developed into new experiences and distributed via the requires work to iterate across platforms and make sticky in a different platforms. commercial sense - The Lizzie Bennet Diaries on Youtube being an indie success story. To illustrate further, some hardware platforms are more suited to telling certain types of stories than others. Think about the way in When developing an All Media project, first of all look at the core which you use these platforms and play to their strengths. Smart story and the premise of that story. You immediately test that phones are personal devices that enable you to perform and story across other platforms i.e. would it work as a: novel; web explore a multitude of activities via touch screen interface, but you series; game; app? Apply due diligence to research stories within also hold it to your ear when you receive calls and speak into it to the same genre that have also been told over multiple platforms. communicate in a way that is very intimate. Tablets have the same Fundamentally you’ll come back to “Is it a great story?” And if it’s a great story with great characters that have loads of scope within
44 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Concept firelight 45 interface but aren’t as personal. Laptop and desktop computers SUMMARY have a different interface but contain personal files. Televisions and cinema screens are different again. In essence the Concept stage involves adapting story across All Also the way you ‘share’ these different devices with friends and Media by looking at your core story, looking at the media you want strangers varies as does the way you interact online with to deliver to in order to reach the largest possible audience, and different social networks. Think about what each media asking yourself, “How do we adapt across to this medium and platform facilitates and allocate story and content accordingly. which characters within our story will be best to carry across to that media?”
A Firelight example: staying true to the storyworld
At its core, Storm Surfers is a big adventure about going to an unknown place and surfing a wave that’s never been surfed before. When it came to the webseries, we knew we couldn’t tell that style of story in a three minute webisode. So we looked at the platform, looked at the media and realised the thing people want is to understand how to surf and, by extension, understand how our main characters surf a giant wave. So we created a how-to webseries - How to Surf a Giant Wave - around this premise. The series has proven to be really popular across mobile and TV platforms.
46 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Concept firelight 47 DEVELOPMENT INTRODUCTION The Development phase is perhaps one of the most critical as this is where you have the opportunity to work up all the possibilities with the creative team and then begin planning how you are going to finance, produce, market and distribute those assets.
Consistent Outcomes in All Media...... 50 There are numerous factors that are important to consider at this early stage of the production such as how you’re going to pull the Strategy...... 51 deal together, how you’re going to access cast and whether you Leading The Development Process ...... 53 need a separate team to acquire content for the All Media assets. Extending Story Across Media...... 55 You need to be thinking about when the content is delivered, how Development Across Each Form...... 56 it’s going to be promoted and ensure that when it’s delivered you Franchising...... 59 have a roll-out strategy.
One of the exciting things about developing an All Media property is the integration of each of the products that are created and how they relate to the overall campaign and roll out of the content. In the Development phase, it is also likely you will touch on each What’s important is that you can look at what’s been done, see what’s other phase of production. You may need to produce and electronic successful and determine what’s manageable. Manageability is proof of concept or a sizzle reel which then involves working across key as you need to not only factor in financial and time constraints, the Production phases. The sizzle reel, along with the brochure but also operational constraints. and scripts will then end up being used as a Marketing tool when you take the project out to raise Finance. It is possible during Development to be engaging with your audience through social media as a way of gathering knowledge and building your fan base. STRATEGY In other words, use the Firelight Production Model in a non-linear way, ensuring you consider all phases of production during every other phase of production. Once you have a script or treatment for your principal property, you can bring in your creative experts (usually your principal writer and director) to join your All Media producer to brainstorm the potential All Media properties you want to produce. This team CONSISTENT OUTCOMES IN ALL MEDIA should be thinking about where, when and how your audience will interact with the genre, format and subject matter of your principal property. A menu of options is then created of what properties can One thing that’s interesting about looking at All Media wrapped be produced and how the story can be told across All Media. around a primary property is that there’s an increasing consistency with the different forms in the different genres.
If you look at a TV drama series, tele-movie or mini series, you’ll see that increasingly people are creating prequel stories that are being run on the internet in the lead up to the premier or a webseries that sits between the cliffhanger of one series and the launch of the next.
Geo-locative game play is another popular iteration with TV drama. With documentary series, patterns include multiple choice quizzes or representations of what your life would be like under different conditions such as Get Back to Where you Came From.
50 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Development firelight 51 LEADING THE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS A Firelight example: The All Media Producer Ideally, the Executive Producer, Producer (or Project Director) will lead the development process because it’s difficult for the We find it useful to bring the All Media Producer into the individual producers (of content on a particular platform) to see development workshops so they are across the process the whole picture, all of the time. Firelight Productions has had from the start and, are able to research various ideas and the most success when as Executive Producers we have had the technologies, advise on their findings and help shape overview and control of all aspects of the project. the wrap-around content. Development Workshops The All Media Producer needs to understand the demands of film and television production as they’ll Once the menu of options for the All Media properties have been be working across crews as well as with the post- identified and outlined, the Executive Producer can commission production team. We also believe it’s important they the key All Media creative team members and bring the principal have experience producing television or film. The All writer and director into the process. Development workshops need Media Producer should also have experience in digital to be run over a couple of days. If you’re serious about doing an All media production (websites, apps etc) and a working Media delivery, allocate 25% to 30% of your development funding knowledge of technical language so they can instruct to this area. their technical team on what needs to be done to produce the wrap-around content. The main aim of the development workshop process should be ensuring that the storyworld is cohesive, that the actions of the characters are consistent, and that every component makes sense in its own right.
All Media projects can become difficult to manage if key All Media personnel haven’t been part of the process from the beginning. They tend to end up competing for resources including access to cast, crew, key creatives and storyworld creatives to produce the outcomes that are expected from them.
52 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Development firelight 53 Writing For All Media - Teamwork EXTENDING STORY ACROSS MEDIA
The primary property will always be dominant over your wrap- around content as the story, actions of the characters or the way If you are intending to extend a story to other media it is important the story unfolds all need to be served and not driven by the to look at that media and ask, “Who is engaging with that media?” supporting content. “How are they engaging with it?” and, “When are they engaging with it?”. You’re looking for evidence that what you’re proposing One of the first steps that can be taken is to detail in concept terms to create is going to be of interest to your target audience and that what’s required for the proposed wrap-around properties. This has they will engage with the story via that particular media. to happen in tandem with planning your All Media strategy. You can’t control everything so write what you’d like to have happen For example, if your primary property and your primary story is whilst being aware that you may need to be nimble on the day aimed at a 60+ audience and you’re wanting them to engage with a when it comes to producing these iterations as scripted. story extension on smart phones, the first thing you should ask is, “What is the smart phone penetration for 60 year old people?” And It’s at this point you bring in your specialists. Who they are will for those with smart phones, “How are they using and engaging depend upon the genre you’re creating, however increasingly with them?” There’s a high probability they’re engaging with email, there are people who are experts in writing webisodes for factual a very low probability they’re playing first-person shooter games content, as well as people who write drama webseries. If you’re and, a very high likelihood they’re playing card games. In which creating fictional news stories you want to maintain the veracity case then, you look at the media and let the media help write what of the message so you should hire a journalist to write the content you’re going to create and adapt your content accordingly. and a news reader to present it. Which platform first? Writing for games, apps, social media and participatory media needs specialist writers. Alternatively if you have a good core team, When considering your storyworld a question you might want to make sure you have enough time to research the tone and form of ask is, “Should it be developed first on a primary platform such as the content. Games are a different beast again. It’s definitely worth TV or Film?” The answer is, “Not necessarily.” Look at the story and creating a game brief and then putting it out to tender with digital ask the simple question, “What is the best way for us to develop production houses or game producers. this story?” And if you’ve got time and money, you may find you’re better off writing it as a novel or graphic novel first to build out If you are planning to acquire content for your web series or other the storyworld, understand it, and test it with an audience. Then if All Media content as part of the principal photography, you will need people go for it, excellent! to take into account that things can and will change on the day. A degree of flexibility in the scripting and planning will be needed.
54 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Development firelight 55 By taking this approach you’ll build out the storyworld and Shows like this lead the way right now and are by far the most potentially make it alot easier and cost effective to develop your refined and sophisticated in their ability to produce content across script or scripts afterwards, because you’ve tested the concept all media. A lot can be taken out of the MasterChef example in and possibly solved many of the story problems upfront. terms of strategy and monetization.
You may also have attracted a fan base. A significant number of top grossing box-office films are adaptations of existing franchises Specialist Factual that were based on books; evidence that a project doesn’t need to always be designed for a primary platform first. The All Media opportunities in specialist factual are pretty exciting. Documentaries can leverage the assets that have been acquired during the research process and the shooting of the program, and utilize them across other platforms.
DEVELOPMENT ACROSS EACH FORM The challenge is to not simply deliver out-takes. You have to deliver on another medium an immersive story that is a genuine extension. For example, an interactive eBook will support the core thesis of the specialist factual program providing greater opportunity for Factual Entertainment their audience to explore the subject matter. Apps involving quizzes about the subject matter and media rich websites are examples of Factual entertainment, in every respect, leads the way in All Media further All Media extensions. wrap-around and delivery as well as engagement with the audience. It’s a form that’s been refined over the last 50 years of television quiz shows and variety shows, where the audience answered the Feature Films call to action at home, and had a go at guessing the answers or got to call into the host. This is, of course, a form of interactivity. In our experience, feature films can be a challenging territory around which to wrap All Media properties if you haven’t been considering Factual entertainment has also harnessed monetizing the wrap- an All Media delivery from the outset. around better than any other platform. MasterChef, is a perfect example. Not only does the show entertain but the recipes, the list What you have to do is build the storyworld out from the script. This of ingredients and cooking method are printed and given away in would necessitate your All Media Producer working with the script supermarkets which also stock MasterChef labelled ingredients, writer or script writing team to create an extended treatment which so that people can create the same meal the next night. then enables you to adapt elements across to other platforms.
56 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Development firelight 57 Scripts, prototypes and electronic proof of concepts of the wrap- FRANCHISING around properties you’re considering producing should be made well before you go into production. Test these prototypes with the director and get their buy-in to ensure that they can be produced One of the most exciting possibilities with All Media production alongside the primary property. This process will facilitate the is that you can create a franchise that you as the producer own efficient scheduling of resources so that the All Media content will and can go on to exploit in sequels, spin-offs and remakes. Rather have the same production values as the principal property, and than making a huge investment in the concept and development thereby speak to the same brand. The content is also guaranteed process and then just having a script, single movie, TV series or to be in place for when the film is released, and will facilitate one-off documentary as an outcome – you can decide upfront “we driving your audience to the principal property in a concerted and want to create a franchise out of this”. strategic campaign. This enables you to address other territories, sequels and spin-off The factual space can be the narrative of making the feature film, series and means your storyworld will be capable of living beyond and is by far the easiest to do and most exciting because you don’t its first generation on the platforms on which it has been released. have to give the plot away. Another factual space can be around It means that you will have amortised development costs across the subject matter of the film. Making a documentary that helps several outcomes and are building a loyal fanbase and repeat build interest in the subject, particularly if it’s a controversial one, buyers and financiers in multiple territories. can be a great way to build a Zeitgeist that then translates through to increased interest, publicity and discussion that leads into the marketing campaign for the film. Ancillaries and Spin-offs
Ancillary is another description for multiple iterations of your primary property. In the traditional legal sense, ‘ancillary’ pretty much captured everything and extended through to merchandising, spin-offs and other products such as soundtrack albums. We now make the effort to split our ancillary, spin-off and All Media rights during the contracting.
As the ancillary rights could individually become successful they need to be defined and separated so that you have the ability to exploit them. When developing a project, it is important to think about this aspect of the financing, legals and exploitation rights to ensure that you are clear about who owns what and what obligations if any you might have to the creators.
58 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Development firelight 59 FINANCING INTRODUCTION
The Financing phase covers three key areas; budgeting, financing (or raising the finance) and legal rights management. This chapter focuses on some of the key areas that need to be addressed when
Budgeting All Media Content...... 62 putting together an All Media project to ensure that you will have sufficient enough budget, that the exploitation rights for the All Primary Properties and Financing...... 64 Media assets will not be in any way compromised and that you are All Media Project Financing...... 65 maximising your financing opportunities. Return On Investment...... 67
Rights Management: Ownership of the All Media Content...... 70 The Financing phase is usually one of the most difficult and vexed stages in the production cycle. The stresses and pressure around the financing and contracting of the primary property will often be extremely intense and overwhelming. Many Producers find the idea of adding another layer of complexity to the project by trying to produce, what is in essence, a whole suite of additional content incredibly daunting. It is easy to give up. But don’t! It will be worth it. When you get to the release of your project, you will be very glad As to the specifics of budgeting, we break down within the budget you hung in at this stage and got the finance over the line, got the separate worksheets in Excel that are specific to the production of budget right and ensured the contracts enable you to exploit the All the All Media assets. We then bring the sub-totals across into the Media properties to help build buzz and value around your project. main budget and they become line items within the main budget with a link through to the other sheet. It is also important to address the All Media needs of a project at this stage in terms of finance, budget and contracting as you will not have time during the pre-production phase to deal with these issues. By then you should be concentrating on getting the project underway. Firelight approach: How we value each All Media property
We have a unique approach to the notion of the idea of treating the cost of each individual asset as having an BUDGETING ALL MEDIA CONTENT intrinsic cost equal to the entire budget. When people asked us how much did the eBook cost, we say the face value cost of the eBook was $20,000, but the total cost A simple rule of thumb for the minimum you can spend on an All of the eBook was $3 million or the cost of the film. Why? Media wrap-around is 10% of the total budget. Ideally features Because the eBook contains content that was shot in should be a much higher spend than specialist factual TV drama, or the process of shooting the film. We couldn’t have made a children’s All Media wrap-around. Features should ideally amount the eBook if we hadn’t have been able to send the stills to at least 15% to 20% of the total budget and P&A combined. photographer and journalist on location with the main unit. The main unit shoot has a value that is intrinsic to e.g. Feature budget = $5m + $1m P&A = $6m the value of the entire production. $6m X 15% = $900,000 = All Media Budget
As soon as you go below 10%, you’re really going to be stripping back what you’re able to produce to the point that it will be difficult to successfully integrate into the campaign. The assets may end up being cute add-ons that are bit of a bonus for the audience rather than a genuine All Media delivery.
62 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Financing firelight 63 Cost and Budgeting for Delivery ALL MEDIA PROJECT FINANCING
It’s important to remember that the budget for each All Media asset needs to include the costs associated with the ongoing roll out of Screen Australia facilitates a unique situation in financing an All all of the All Media content - which often extends far beyond the Media project through the Producers Offset. You can utilise it to delivery of the primary property. If you’re delivering a TV series, pay for the multi platform iterations wrapped around the primary you need to not only be accounting for when the TV series is first property. What many people don’t realise is that if you want to broadcast, but it’s potential future broadcasts or second series. produce a web series, an app, a whole behind-the-scenes series, build a website, deliver a graphic novel... and you produce the You also need to take into account if you’ve got a 4 X 1 hour TV properties before the film or TV show is delivered, most of those Series that’s going to work globally, that as the series rolls out in items fall within the Qualifying Australian Production Expenditure as each territory it has the potential to reach an increased audience marketing. This is one of the key ways to fund your All Media project. through its All Media properties. If you have a team that’s continuing to maintain and promote the experiences through social media, To give a very simple example, if you’re making a $3 million movie you stand to increase the price of the property in those territories. and you’re getting back 35% of the total budget from the Producers Offset, you can utilize some of that money to create the All Media iterations of the primary property. Similarly in television where you get 20% back, you can utilize that money to create the All Media properties that qualify for the rebate.
PRIMARY PROPERTIES AND FINANCING There’s also a range of other sources including direct government investment from the State and Federal funding agencies. It is best The film that is made for theatrical release, the TV show that is made to visit the websites of each of the agencies to get up to date for free-to-air TV or subscription television, VOD or a video platform, information on their digital media programs. is the primary property. Film and television are the two biggest, most powerful mediums. What then gets wrapped around that is It’s also possible to go to the private sector for advertising, the All Media or multi-platform delivery. The primary properties sponsorship or in-kind support. If you do this you need to budget drive the financing of your project because the distributors and for a full time person to handle those accounts in the same way that networks are often the only places where you can get money in any agency handles accounts, and to manage those relationships advance to produce your project. which often run for many months if not years. Their interest will extend through the pre-production, production and distribution of the primary property. It’s sensible to try and work in this space, but you also have to have someone who’s very experienced in working with agencies, advertisers and marketing directors because their objective is to sell their products, not your project.
64 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Financing firelight 65 With the commercial networks, there’s a lot of scope to find RETURN ON INVESTMENT money by putting together integrated campaigns for advertisers that include delivery to other platforms. This is also happening in feature films, where the large franchise features are doing deals One of the things that executives and investors grapple with the with advertisers and companies where they have a product that is most is how to quantify the Return on Investment (ROI) for what exclusively tied to an app or a game. seems to be a huge amount of effort and expenditure on the All Media wrap-around of the primary property.
Sponsorship, Advertising And Investment It can become an issue if you look at any individual iteration, i.e. the webseries or the website, and try to quantify a ROI on that specific The definitions around Sponsorship, Advertising and Investment asset. Doing this doesn’t take into account that the wrap-around have to be made very clear within this space. Sponsorship is money is a holistic strategy tied to building awareness of the primary that you’re given that goes towards your project that is delivering property. For example, if you took away the website and you only back brand exposure. So if you just have the logo on the back of did social media, then where do you point people to get the in- a t-shirt, that’s the brand and the brand gets a lift. Advertising is depth information and find out when the show is on, or when is the where a company places and pays for an advertisment for their film screening? You cannot put character profiles in a 120 character brand or a specific product. Investment is where a company or tweet! You need the full range of All Media assets to be able to build funding agency invests and expects a return on that investment. the campaign. In the same way that when you advertise a product you do more than just put up billboards (i.e. you advertise across TV, radio and print, utilise celebrity endorsements, have testings A Firelight example: Sponsorship etc), All Media requires PR and is part of a whole campaign.
and integration on Storm Surfers If you want to determine a ROI treat the All Media project as a whole and, then, look for the key identifier which is: Did we get With Storm Surfers, the money we attracted from the more ratings or did we sell more tickets to the film than the last film companies we were involved with was a combination or TV show we did in that genre? of investment and sponsorship. Red Bull Media House invested in the film with the expectation of getting a return from the back end - which is why they have so little exposure of their brand within the film. Their interest was in expanding the media arm of their company and having their athletes’ profile raised. The more their athletes’ profile is raised, the greater the benefit for their drink brand.
66 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Financing firelight 67 How much should you spend?
The question around what you should spend is never simple. We A Firelight example: Cost of have found that in almost every case, people want to pay the least getting a Website built amount for the highest return. In 1999 we got one quote for $1000 and another for Some key tips are: $350,000 off the same brief to build a website for a multi- platform delivery for our All Media documentary Little 1. Producers often pay too much for apps and games; Dove Big Voyage. From that point on, I’ve been deeply sceptical about the cost involved in producing websites 2. They pay too little for websites, not accounting for the reality and apps, so I ask digital production houses to break that they need to be maintained on an ongoing basis; their costs down into as many line items as possible.
3. They pay too little for behind-the-scenes content and completely underestimate the power of this format;
4. They pay too little for their stills and the editorial of those stills.
Often producers are confused or disappointed when a webseries doesn’t match the production values of the primary property; the $150,000 app only delivers 1,000 downloads; and the other A Firelight tip: Produce the All iterations that they paid for are not delivering the audience they expected. It’s the same as spending alot of money in advertising Media Properties simultaneously and the show doesn’t rate. It’s crucial that money is allocated to marketing these All-Media assets to secure a ROI. More on that Producing All Media content separate to the primary later in the Marketing section. property will cost you approximately four to five times as much as producing it simultaneously to the production of Coming back to what you should spend on the All Media assets, the Primary Property. If you wait till after completing the the most important thing is not to ask a digital production house for project to start on the All Media production, the assets a quote. Tell them what you have to spend instead and what your you can leverage across from the Primary Property are no expectations are in terms of a ROI and negotiate from there. That’s longer likely to available and you’ll also have lost access why its important to get someone on your team who understands to the original key creative team. You’ve also lost the All Media and costs of production. window for building your audience during production.
68 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Financing firelight 69 RIGHTS MANAGEMENT: OWNERSHIP are being exploited where and who has the rights to exploit them across those territories. We then come back to the questions of OF THE ALL MEDIA CONTENT “What am I willing to give away? What do I want to retain in case this thing becomes a hit?” You will never know where your hit is going to come from, so when it comes, you absolutely want to When you’re financing a production, one of the most difficult have the ability to be able to continue to exploit it. questions that comes up during the contracting process is who owns the All Media Content? Webisode Rights Management What is really important is to first ask the question “Who’s paying for it?” If the network is 100% financing a TV series, and then they With our webisodes, we ensure that everyone is clear that the say, “Oh by the way I want an entire wrap-around for this and I’m rights are non-exclusive and non-territorial. We treat territories for not going to pay for it,” the answer is very simple about who owns our webisodes as the publisher’s territory. Our theory is that every it - the producer. If the network then says “I want to place a whole publisher has their own niche audience that might be anywhere a lot of caveats and restrictions around the roll out of that content in the world. There is a good chance that they are not competing because it might cannibalise our audience, but I want all of that with other publishers even if they might be sharing some of the content so I can utilise it to run a campaign for the show.” The same readers and viewers. Why? Because the video content on answer is simple “You’re going to have to pay for it.” their site is non-exclusive and unless that publisher is a video only site, people are generally going to the publisher’s site first for If they’re not going to pay for it then you own it and you can do information and second for entertainment. what you like with that content as you own the underlying rights. It becomes a more vexed question when you’re talking about You can do a global deal and a territory deal with the same product a property that has been developed in conjunction with other as long as the territory that has the property on a global basis has companies or in conjunction with the network or studio as to a small, niche market and serves to promote the brand, rather who then owns the underlying rights. In this case, splitting the than cannibalise the audience of a customer such as a TV network ownership of the rights and being clear about exploitation rights purchasing it for their territory. can be a simple solution.
Protecting Your Interests
We have found as producers that to protect your property, particularly in the world of All Media, the most important thing is to read the fine print in every single contract. We then create a rights matrix and work out on a map of the world exactly what properties
70 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Financing firelight 71 Similarly with Storm Surfers, we have a brand that can continue forever in all sorts of iterations, because ultimately we’re dealing A Firelight example: Webisode rights with the same story each time: an adventure to find a giant wave that’s never been surfed before. If you take, for instance, the Surf Channel that launched in the USA, we did a deal with them and said, “If you You know your storyworld has become a franchise when you get create the permanent Storm Surfers’ micro-site within re-commissioned in one or more of the iterations to further explore your channel, we will give you all our webisode content the storyworld. for free.”
Another extreme sports channel on the YouTube platform asked us if they could have an exclusive license for our content on a revenue share basis and we said “Sure, if you pay us for global exclusive rights, which is about $15,000 per minute, you can have them exclusively.” Of course they declined.
Franchise Rights
It’s entirely possible to set up a franchise around your All Media project and your storyworlds. Some storyworlds are more difficult to set up as a franchise particularly if you’re dealing with socio- political material. There are certain stories, especially in the world of features, where it’s very difficult to adapt them further and do sequels and spin-offs.
The Screentime production Underbelly is a great example of a franchise. Underbelly is based on stories of criminal gangs or big crime figures who inevitably rise and fall. So you have an endless supply of stories under the Underbelly brand.
72 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Financing firelight 73 INTRODUCTION
The thing to remember when producing an All Media project is that planning is the key to everything. You’ve nominated your properties in the concept and development process; you’ve identified audience sectors and devised strategies for engaging them across PRE-PRODUCTION different platforms and keeping them involved in your storyworld. Chances are you’ve started herding your audience through crowd sourcing and social media updates. Your finance is in place and you’re gearing up to realise your scripts, treatments and asset lists. Like any film and television production, you need to do it on time and within budget – except in this instance, you’re producing a multitude of inter-related properties, simultaneously. Integrating All Media Production Into the Main Production...... 76
All Media Crew and Team...... 77 Pre-Production is a hugely exciting period, as you’ll be able to
Scheduling All Media Content Production...... 79 maximize the potential of the assets you create and the items you capture on film. Your All Media Producer’s been on-board since Time and Resource Management...... 81 development and is not only across the requirements of your wrap- Cast and Talent Involvement in All Media content...... 81 around properties, they’re aware of the potential to capture special Website Creation And Production...... 83 unexpected moments during the pre-production, production and Post-Production All Media Team...... 85 quite possibly the post-production and delivery stages as well.
Software Development...... 85 You’ll be helping them create in-storyworld material to drive traffic to your principal property, by being across the production process Managing Social Media During Production...... 86 and providing feedback from here on in. Content Roll Out During Pre-Production...... 87 Pre- Release Content Schedule...... 89 It’s time to make it work. INTEGRATING ALL MEDIA PRODUCTION Time needs to be incorporated into the production of assets, access to locations, availability of cast, use of post-production INTO THE MAIN PRODUCTION facilities and scheduling of crew. It’s an added pressure and one that shouldn’t be under estimated, but with careful planning and effective communication strategies, your goals will not only be It’s vital there be a crew or unit that’s specific to All Media achieved, but you’ll also find the process gratifying. Production. That said we’ve also found that the best way for the main crew to appreciate the value of the All Media team and understand that they’re an essential part of the production, is to refer to them as “2nd unit”. It’s important they be considered in this light because if the All Media budget isn’t protected, and sufficient ALL MEDIA CREW AND TEAM time and resources aren’t allocated to what you’re trying to achieve with your All Media strategy, there won’t be enough assets to work with in post-production. As a result, the marketing and distribution On a drama shoot the Production Manager, 1st AD and Director strategy you’ve been working towards will fall flat. need to work closely with your All Media Producer to accommodate access to locations, cast and crew. The Production Manager of the We mentioned earlier that the budget of an All Media wrap-around principal property needs to be across All Media activities because should be equivalent to approximately 10% of the principal of the demands on budget. property’s budget. This ratio also applies to the overall time and resources that need to be dedicated to the pre-production, The 1st AD will determine when access can occur in terms of the production, post-production and delivery of All Media materials. schedule and by default the budget; and the Director of All Media content (which might also be the main unit director) will determine It’s possible the ratio may be greater in certain circumstances such what access to main unit will be required. The same principal as creating visual effects for a game within an app, or creating applies when shooting a documentary although it’s possible your dramatised All Media components in support of a specialist factual Production Manager would be controlling the schedule. documentary. If the main unit and the All Media unit are sharing resources, be they cast, crew, locations, sets, props, costumes In general, the All Media crew can be quite small, particularly if etc, all of these requirements need to be reflected in the main unit’s grips and gaffers can be sourced from the main crew. However, production schedule. if the main unit schedule is such that this isn’t possible, you’ll need to budget accordingly. Dedicated All Media crews include Integrating your All Media production with the main production will a camera operator, sound recordist and stills photographer. Stills make demands upon all of the principal property’s departments. are a major component of All Media content and a main unit stills Time is an obvious consideration and it’s a resource that needs to photographer cannot be across both units. The job of a main unit be built into every part of every department’s schedule – not just stills photographer is to get promotional stills; promotional stills are the shoot. not All Media content.
76 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Pre-Production firelight 77 opportunities or changes in circumstances. Ultimately these meetings will facilitate changes being integrated into the main A Firelight Example: All Media Crew unit schedule.
Right from the beginning of the documentary Little Dove Big Voyage, we had a unit specifically for the 30-part Web Series. On Scorched we had an entire drama team SCHEDULING ALL MEDIA specifically to make the TV drama and a news team to make the news reports. On Storm Surfers, we had a CONTENT PRODUCTION team dedicated to the production of All Media Content. It’s important to schedule production meetings for your All Media With our documentary wrap-arounds the best results crew. These will include both All Media production meetings and haven’t come from behind-the-scenes filmmakers, main unit production meetings. The whole All Media team should they’ve come from photo journalists. And when it came to also be involved in any workshops so they’re across everything surf photography we hired a surf photographer because that’s going on, and can anticipate potential opportunities. All they specialise in capturing iconic surf moments. Media cast may also be required to be at some of these meetings.
In our experience documentary typically requires a lot With regard to scheduling your All Media shoot, your All Media more stills for the wrap-around than for the principal wrap-around properties will determine the type of content that property because stills will not only feature in a lot of needs to be acquired as well as the complexity of scheduling the content you share on your website and social media across the required units. but they’re also a vital component of an eBook. Stills take time – so you need to schedule and manage your Another thing to factor in is that your All Media post-production resources accordingly. schedule will run slightly differently to that of the main unit. All Media may only have one or two edit suites running, cutting and doing the assemblies, however entire webisodes may need to be completed and published before the end of the film shoot, in which case producers need to schedule in time for approvals. With regard to keeping the various Above The Line producers abreast of what’s happening with the dynamically responsive All Media team, regular meetings should be scheduled to discuss the content capturing process and how it’s feeding the All Media strategy. These meetings are also a good opportunity to canvass any new developments that have come to light, be they unforeseen
78 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Pre-Production firelight 79 The range of assets your All Media team might need to pursue TIME AND RESOURCE MANAGEMENT could include: A lot of the tips and advice we have to offer for Pre-Production • Documentary style sound grabs, short video or centre around time and human resource management. Our stills of cast, props, costumes, sets, locations and experience and the case studies in this book show that storyworld the crew in action on the main unit shoot; continuity benefits from having your key creatives work across all • Dramatized sound grabs, short video or stills of characters, of the platforms. props, sets and locations on the main unit shoot; An ideal situation in terms of storyworld uniformity and integration • Specially scripted dramatized All Media content: is for your Director to work across all of the content. However, be sound grabs, short video and stills; aware from a budgeting and scheduling point of view, they are going to need time before or afterwards (most likely afterwards), to • Specially scripted documentary style All Media do it. They’ll probably be able to drive the edits through, but you’ll content: sound grabs, short video and stills; also need a creative producer to help drive the process. • Live events such as sports events, music concerts, news style footage, vox pops etc. Similarly, you’ll want access to the cast playing the characters that inhabit your core storyworld as they’re conduits to the As the list implies, there needs to be clear communication channels audience enjoying the experience you’re creating for them. The between both units to ensure cooperation and the efficient use audience identifies with your characters and your characters carry of resources. your storyworld.
A Firelight Tip: Scheduling and Delivery CAST AND TALENT INVOLVEMENT IN ALL MEDIA CONTENT We’ve found that scheduling generously and appropriately, has provided enough time during the shoot to acquire assets for our All Media wrap-around. With factual programming we’ve always found everybody more We also recommend allocating sufficient time to cut and than happy to participate in the All Media wrap-around. With TV deliver. You can’t deliver sub-standard quality video on drama, it’s relatively easy now, in Australia, to negotiate access the internet. If it is sub-standard it shouldn’t be published; to cast under the union agreements. We’ve found feature films it has to match the quality of the Primary Property. however to be a different experience and believe the only way to get the participation of the main cast would be to have them involved from the very beginning.
80 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Pre-Production firelight 81 It would have to be clear from the very first day the project is WEBSITE CREATION AND PRODUCTION pitched to the agent, that the actor’s job involves being in the movie and being in the All Media content; and that the agreement encompasses the actor providing the same confidence they have It’s easy to think when you’re caught up in the Pre-Production in the director, to the people who are creatively managing the All of film and TV, that assets such as websites are less important Media Content. than the show you’re creating. However nothing could be further from the truth. There is scope and it’s certainly a lot easier to use feature film or TV drama series or support cast in any kind of All Media content. Your website is one of the most important things you can create What has to be assessed is the value of the story you’re creating as a content producer, regardless of whether you’re producing All around that cast member against the cost of negotiating access Media or not. It’s the destination hub for everything about your to them (although this might be mitigated by them having the film. That might sound crazy given what social media can do but opportunity to play the lead in the All Media iterations). Ensemble websites can do more. They can contain all the elements you need cast in an ongoing TV drama series are potential gold because to deliver your All Media wrap-around (e.g. video, stills) and they they’ll already have their own fan base and you can motivate and can sell tickets to your film or detail when, where and how the activate that fan base. public can view the TV program or DVD.
The perfect world is where you find an actor who absolutely loves Integrate your URL into every social media interaction and the project and understands from the beginning, from the producer advertising blurb and you can’t go wrong. As long as you maintain and director and writer, what you are trying to achieve. If they your website, it’ll function as a resource. Social media on the other understand the wrap-around is an integrated part of the marketing hand are based on feeds and feeds disappear on a person’s social campaign for the primary property and, that they are involved media wall within minutes. creatively in what is going to be made, then you’ll probably get a really great response. It’s amazing what simple off-the-shelf platforms like WordPress can do for relatively little outlay. This is an important consideration Certainly in our experience that’s when we’ve had the best response at the Pre-Production stage given your marketing and design - when we’ve literally involved the lead cast members in the writing elements are still being determined. Ideally you’ll have someone of the scripts - they just tell their agent “I’m doing it.” who can build your website in-house. If you have the budget to outsource it that’s fantastic but, you need to account for all the editorial rounds during the build and, you also hand over control when things can’t be done in-house.
82 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Pre-Production firelight 83 POST-PRODUCTION ALL MEDIA TEAM A Firelight example: Website design Your post-production team will be liaising with the team publishing We’ve found the best approach when setting up a look your All Media content and this relationship could continue with on a website at the Pre-Production stage is to keep the project, way beyond post-production and possibly way beyond it simple. Select a colour palette and font. You can delivery. Be aware of this when contracting personnel and choosing elaborate on this later. digital platforms and software for your content management systems. Identify the system everybody is using and don’t use anything else. There’s a tendency to look for an alternative that might be better but still has a few bugs... you soon discover why From your fans’ perspective, they’re looking to find content – stills, it’s not the most popular one - it’s because it’s got a few bugs! videos, the synopsis, maybe a Facebook and Twitter link. Further down the track, they’ll be looking to buy tickets – you can add At the Pre-Production stage you’ll also be looking to engage your a link then. All Media post-production team. Chances are you can keep your team quite small by employing an editor but utilizing the assistant It’s surprising how many websites for Australian films don’t have from the main unit to help manage the rushes. In terms of the a link to buy tickets. It’s the same for TV shows. Often there’s no online, consider whether you want to pipe the online through the information regarding what network the program is screening on let offline machine. Alternatively, if you have the budget, you should alone the time and date. drive any kind of web content through a full online process.
A Firelight example: Why websites are important SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
On Storm Surfers, our analytics showed that 50% of Remember, you’re in the business of telling stories not creating our box office ticket sales were made directly through bespoke software. If you have a technology partner who believes our website. Anywhere that users could click to find there’s an opportunity to create or develop a piece of technology out more about Storm Surfers took them straight to the to solve a creative problem, then contemplate partnering with them page that listed cinemas and screenings. The user only on its production however, never let them be the exclusive owner then needed to scroll and click once more to make a of the technology because you could lose control of it. purchase. Two clicks and they had a ticket. You can’t achieve this through a Facebook page.
84 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Pre-Production firelight 85 This becomes a very real issue if you are dependent on that piece of technology or software for your production and the relationship goes sour. You don’t want to find yourself in the situation where A Firelight example: Social Media you’re not able to keep the technology, use it or extract your content. There is no marriage that you should not be able to get We’ve set up a simple approach where we provide access divorced from. to pretty much everybody in our crew - certainly all the lead creative people. We encourage them to talk about their journey and what’s going on in their department that will enhance the storyworld (whilst not giving away MANAGING SOCIAL MEDIA the plot). Naturally because everything that’s published on social media is public and instant, you specify that DURING PRODUCTION they think first before they publish and set up clear guidelines about what should be published (and what shouldn’t). However it’s important to be encouraging It takes time to build a social media fan base: a year, two years, as you don’t want to paralyse them with rules. In other three years. So if you are starting a production and you’re going to words, put stuff up as it can always be taken down if it’s air in 18 months time, you need to start now on your social media. not appropriate. If you post something once a day – it’s achievable and you’re going to succeed. Post something twice a day - that’s cool. Five times a day however is uncool. Less frequent is alright as well, say once every three days. If it’s once a month though, you might as well not do it. CONTENT ROLL-OUT DURING PRE-PRODUCTION The management of social media during Pre-Production requires a basic framework and a basic set of rules for the process of approval that are not too onerous, but provide the social media Your social media roll-out also supports your content roll-out. And manager with a clear understanding about what they can and can’t your website launch is tantamount to both. say. The best rule is, “If you’re in doubt, ask about what should get published.” It’s much easier for them to ask you, the producer, There’s a great opportunity that is being increasingly exploited about whether something could compromise the production ahead by major directors such as Peter Jackson and Baz Luhrmann, to of time than it is for you to have to manage a meltdown. create a narrative around making the film. A lot of people forget that there is a massive fan base out there who not only love movies but Starting a Facebook page, a Twitter account and an Instagram also the stories behind how those movies get made. Movies are account takes 15 minutes. You don’t need to do any design, all glamorous. It is a thousand times more interesting making movies you do is set it up and start plugging in content. than it is working in a supermarket.
86 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Pre-Production firelight 87 Our job as entertainers is to entertain our audience and that means PRE-RELEASE CONTENT SCHEDULE more than delivering the principal property. Entertain them with the story of how you made it. To call it “a making of” is probably not quite right – that’s your half hour EPK (Electronic Press Kit). What It is important to try and create a pre-release content schedule that we are talking about is a genuinely narrative extension; a behind everybody agrees to. It needs to be consistent with all the cast the scenes extension where you can hopefully follow the main and crew agreements that the Executive Producer has approved character who is more often than not, the director. in advance. There needs to be a liaison person - the All Media producer - who works closely with the Executive Producer or line producer and the people managing the content roll-out to ensure A Firelight tip: Meta-films that the protocols and procedures for the approval of content are expeditious. Otherwise it’ll all get road-blocked and you won’t get anything out when you realise that you need actor approvals, If you look at some of the most successful documentaries, music clearances, writer’s agreement or other approval rights that they’ve been films about making films: Heart of Darkness preclude you from being able to release material according to made by Elena Coppola about Apocalypse Now ran in the schedule. the cinemas for years; there was also Terry Gilliam’s Lost in La Mancha. Take these examples as your foundation idea and create a well produced story about the trials and tribulations of the director dealing with the crazy stuff that goes on. A Firelight example: Content roll- out during Pre-Production
It’s important to trust the person who’s producing the content With both drama and factual, we’ve found the best to respect the politics and complexities of producing. You can’t strategy for rolling out content during Pre-Production, give away secrets or denigrate people however, you can have the is to distribute our lighter content such as photos or director talking about their hopes and aspirations. texts via social media platforms; and save our richer content until further down the track. Create a build for With specialist factual programming, during Pre-Production there’s the principal property by dissemination elements of the a whole lot of content you can be rolling out that’s tied to the project’s richer content during the principal property’s production, research. If you got a super topical matter that you’re addressing, post-production, release and post release periods. you want to start publishing material as early as possible to get the conversation happening.
88 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Pre-Production firelight 89 PRODUCTION INTRODUCTION In the Producing phase, all your planning will come to fruition as you set about collecting all the assets you need to produce the All Media properties. However, no matter what happens, the production of the primary property will always dominate your time and energies. It’s at this point that your All Media producer will Briefing Cast and Crew...... 93 become critical to ensuring that you can concentrate on the main Asset Acquisition...... 95 event whilst they focus on the production of the other assets.
Digital Assets Manager...... 97 A key consideration during production is looking for opportunities Content Roll-Out During Production...... 98 that were not planned. As the All Media production will be The Feedback Loop ...... 100 subordinated to the main production, all the best laid plans do not Producing All Media Iterations...... 101 always come to fruition. So it is important to ensure that the All App Production...... 102 Media team and the rest of the production team are looking out for opportunities. They may come in the form of a scheduling change Games Production...... 103 that has left a set free for a day; one of your talent in your shiny floor EBook Production...... 106 show finding out she is pregnant or a demonstration you have just Producing for the Internet...... 108
Web Series...... 109 found out about that is relevant to your social issue documentary. BRIEFING CAST AND CREW Whatever it is, the beauty of having an All Media team at the ready is they can hoover up assets to form part of your All Media delivery. Pre-Production has finished, the All Media unit’s schedule has Production also requires you to consider what material you will need been integrated in with the main unit’s schedule where required, to market the primary property and the All Media iterations. Whilst and it’s all systems go. in production, the key creative team will be focusing entirely on the project, the subject matter and the underlying themes. I have found that this is a great time to explore the potential marketing angles Drama Production that can eventually translate into the strategy for your campaign. As you’re aware with drama productions in particular, crew and Most importantly, Production is the time when you will be able cast start dates are staggered throughout the pre-production and to acquire the assets you are going to need for the All Media production schedule. As the producer, you may find it necessary iterations. It is very expensive and time consuming to gather assets to reiterate to the 1st AD and casting agencies, the need for their after principal photography. departments to brief newcomers about what’s happening well before their first day on set. As mentioned before, it’s vital the All Media Unit is treated as part of the primary production unit and referred to as such. They have to have equal status and the crews need to work together to achieve targeted outcomes.
Prior to the first day of shoot, the All Media crew need to be briefed by the 1st AD about channels of communication and the need to respect protocol. It’s imperative they inform the AD department about what they’re filming and why, so the AD department can inform cast and crew and reassure anybody who may be concerned that the All Media crew’s objectives may compromise their ability to do their job. This particularly applies to cast as whenever a camera is pointed in their direction, they’re going to assume the shot could end up in the public domain.
Photographic content cannot be collected in a random fashion otherwise the All Media crew risks losing access to the set. The 1st AD will keep cast and crew availed of the All Media unit’s presence and intentions via the call sheet, morning briefings and other communication channels at hand.
92 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Production firelight 93 Children’s Drama Production ASSET ACQUISITION
Children’s television is stricter again. The All Media crew need to be informed of the legislative rules regarding working with Stills children. The limitations regarding the period of time children are legally permitted on set apply to the shoot as a whole. As a result On top of the stipulations of what you can and can’t shoot, when it the demands upon the main unit to move through the schedule comes to the acquisition of assets for social media you’ll find you efficiently is high. never have enough content. It doesn’t matter whether you have taken 10,000 photos, you’ll still find yourself wanting for that shot Communication between the ADs and the All Media crew is vital you couldn’t get for a sponsor or magazine, newspaper, social so that access to child cast can be accommodated. Working With media site or online publication. It’s maddening. Children clearances are also necessary. For all these reasons, the All Media crew need to know they can’t just wander off with a child cast member. Strict coordination and supervision rules apply. Behind the Scenes
Factual Production On the other hand, when it comes to shooting your behind-the- scenes material, there’s every possibility you’ll have way too much and, what you do shoot, will have little use unless there is a clear In comparison, specialist factual programming is a much smaller or definitive narrative that the footage is attached to. That’s why unit and alot more manageable. Everybody on a documentary planning is imperative. The more you plan, the more likely you’ll shoot will expect that the All Media crew is there to shoot what’s meet your requirements for the various iterations be they webseries, happening on the spot - especially in the case of observational apps, graphic novels and the website, as well as the social media documentaries. That said, protocol should be respected and side of things. interviewees, other subjects and crew should all be made aware that they might end up in shot. Webisode Production
There’s every likelihood that a significant number of the assets required for the All Media content will be the same as those used by the primary property - which is why scheduling both within and across departments is so important.
94 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Production firelight 95 The All Media team will have condensed the primary property’s scripts into assets lists such as props and costumes and liaised with the various departments to either utilise those props or have A Firelight example: Little doubles produced. They’ll also have liaised with the research Dove Big Voyage department to acquire access to various materials for leveraging across the different platforms. An example of an historical asset identified by the research department then leveraged across multiple platforms, is the first known map of Australia charted by Utilising Sets the Dutch sailing vessel Duyfken in 1606. Little Dove Big Voyage revolves around the story of this first recorded A great opportunity for capturing content on any kind of production voyage to Australia. We gained permission to use the be it drama, documentary or factual entertainment, is the sets. image across our content: the website, webisodes, Once they’re built they’re often under-utilised for significant periods poster artwork, the film itself and the interactive DVD. of time. Your 1st AD will have availed the All Media unit of gaps in the schedule but it’s always useful for your All Media Producer to establish a relationship with the Heads of Department to ensure opportunities can be taken advantage of, should they arise. DIGITAL ASSETS MANAGER Locations
Locations also provide a unique backdrop to the story you’re One of the most important people on your All Media production, telling. Once the logistics of transporting the All Media crew to the is the person assigned to managing the digital assets. Depending location and their accommodation has been dealt with, everything upon the size of your production or production house, this person falls into place. The location permits and location releases will have might be the Digital Assets Manager in their own right, an assistant already been acquired, the four-wheel-drives hired and helicopter editor, the All Media producer, the production researcher or the hours booked. The best part is that your All-Media content will production coordinator. have the same production values as your primary property. Whoever it is, they’ll be cataloging a vast quantity of digital assets acquired from data wranglers, camera operators, content capturers, stills photographers, researchers and archivists. These digital assets are then aggregated and carefully managed so they can be made available at a moments notice to various stakeholders all the way through production, post-production, marketing and delivery.
96 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Production firelight 97 CONTENT ROLL-OUT DURING PRODUCTION Instagram, Snapchat, Flickr, Tumblr and Pintrest are just a few of the social media platforms your social media manager will use to connect with your potential audience. There’s loads of material you can release in terms of the narrative of making the show to build buzz and attract an audience. That An example of how this might work would be to think about the said, it’s imperative the person responsible for publishing content vast amounts of awesome images, stills, drawings and research abides by the set of editorial rules established by the Lead Producer, references that someone like Catherine Martin, the Production regarding what can and can’t go out. The last thing you want to Designer of Baz Luhrmann’s films, utilises on any one production. do during the highly pressured production phase is antagonise the If you were the Producer, you might have a person assigned to Director, talent or crew by publishing the wrong thing. You also capturing or photographing that material. They’d hand it to the want to avoid your project being compromised in any way. Digital Assets manager, who’d then make it available to the Social Media manager. It’s unlikely you’ll have much if any fictional wrap-around content ready for release during the production process so unless you What you might find is that Pinterest goes ballistic with people create ‘making of’ material, the other most likely content will be pinning the sketches of the costumes for The Great Gatsby. Your social media based. All Media Producer would then suggest contacting your publicist to sell a story about these costumes to a fashion magazine and, on Peter Jackson’s series on the making of The Hobbit is a good the back of that, do a deal for a coffee-table book. The result being model to aspire to as it was unbelievably cool, incredibly popular, two impromptu iterations of the storyworld that will drive traffic to and people absolutely loved it. You might retort “Yeah, but that’s the principal property. Peter Jackson and you’re talking about The Hobbit!” But it could be any movie. If it’s a cool enough, presented well enough and produced well enough, there’ll be a fan-base. The beauty of the Real-time Publishing and Video Roll-out online digital space is that you can engage with Peter Jackson’s community and invite them to check out your content. You already Other digital platforms facilitate near real-time interaction with know they’re into what goes on behind the scenes - they’re a ready participants of formats such as adventure documentaries. Young made audience. sailor Jessica Watson’s amazing around-the-world voyage is a case in point. Her webcast was probably more engaging than the final packaged documentary as you were on the edge of your Social Media During Production seat waiting for the next instalment. It felt far more honest and exhilarating in comparison to the final documentary because we The various iterations of social media have their own quirks and didn’t know whether she was going to make it or not. specialties, that guarantee the social networking platform an audience for the particular forms of content they share. Twitter,
98 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Production firelight 99 THE FEEDBACK LOOP PRODUCING ALL MEDIA ITERATIONS
Documentaries where there’s a thesis require a different approach such as engaging the audience in a debate. This can occur across Mobiles and Tablets a variety of platforms such as radio, social media, in newsprint, live events etc and can be fed back into the thesis and documented as An important consideration with the production, budgeting and to part of the film. a great extent the delivery of an app and its distribution, is coping with the design requirements for different handset and tablet screen-sizes; as well as the various upgrades of the operating systems and subsequent updates to your app.
A Firelight example: The Mobile phone and tablet operating systems are regularly updated, feedback loop be they iPhone or Android, so when you produce an app you’ll need to budget for it to be updated accordingly. In the case of On the adventure documentary Little Dove Big Voyage, Android, upgrades occur on a handset by handset, and tablet by during the production we published webisodes and blogs, tablet basis. There’s no one quick fix, unless you only produce for and had kids writing back to us and asking questions. iPhone and iPad - which may reduce the size of your target market, As we were on a four month voyage, we were able to so make sure you research your audience thoroughly before making answer these questions during the production, publish expensive decisions one way or another. them and integrate their interests into the documentary treatment. This engagement with the audience during The question of who pays for the ongoing maintenance of an app the voyage led to a much better understanding of can also become troublesome and is an area where you might like what people really wanted to know about the ship, the to consider how you use the Producers Offset. Leave enough of adventure, the history and the crew and led to the film a margin for the ongoing maintenance of the property and all its being well received and getting high ratings. iterations after the delivery and the first window of distribution.
100 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Production firelight 101 APP PRODUCTION It’s better to spend a small amount upfront to test the market, than spend a lot of money creating something for the wrong operating system. If then your app has traction, go back and invest further to Apps can be very sophisticated little websites. They have the ability create a deeper and richer experience. to store video content, contain games, hold character biographies, function as an interactive book, connect through to social media This process will also inform your decision as to whether you want sites and send push notifications to announce that your principal to keep working with the same team that built it. property is about to go to air or that tickets are on sale. In the latter instance, a single tap of the screen will connect your audience member through to an online ticket selling facility. As a marketing Making your App Sticky tool apps are a god send. Find a way of capturing the audience/users imagination so they’ll Also, if you produce your app in a generic software like Unity 3D, feel happy about providing their email address or data through you can update it - not just because you have to, but because you Facebook Connect to keep up to date with your property. The may want to extend upon the experience in some way. latter being a great way to get their feedback and hopefully benefit from them sharing your experience with their friends. Budgeting an App
In terms of budgeting, apps can cost as little as $2000 all the way through to the hundreds of thousands. We recommend starting GAMES PRODUCTION small i.e. around $5000 if you’ve never made one before. Get it out there, spend the same amount again ($5000 dollars) on marketing it (we recommend a 1:1 production to marketing ratio for all media Game Research content) and see how people respond with what they like and don’t like. Do your homework and research games that speak to your target market within the genre you’re creating. This information will also Get feedback. Collect data. Find out who downloaded it by getting serve to inform your decision as to whether you’re producing a them to connect out to your website with a link “join”. If it works game for casual gamers or hard-core gamers - the experiences really well, have some additional budget put aside to update and being two entirely different things. upgrade the app.
102 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Production firelight 103 A guiding principal when producing a game might be whether it’s In all instances, regardless of what the budget is, make sure you purely for people to engage with the brand, whereby the game get a complete and thorough budget break down. It can be worth might be fun and simple. Or whether you’re trying to get to the paying for an independent opinion from someone experienced in hard-core gamer audience, to expose them to the brand with the game production (not a competing company) to look at the budget intention of migrating them across to the primary property. and tell you whether sufficient time has been allocated to the three key aspects of game production: design, coding, and testing. A third scenario is that you’re producing for the hard-core gamer because you believe your storyworld is cool enough for them to Testing is frequently under-budgeted but all important as you don’t engage with on that platform alone. In the latter two instances, want to find yourself in a situation where your primary property has there are going to be genres that are clearly more popular with been released, but your game isn’t ready because it is still buggy. hardcore gamers than others such as first-person shooter games. You’ll not only have wasted your game budget, you will also have a gap in your All Media strategy. Try to get someone to research whether the game you’re pitching has ever been produced, and if not, why not. Is it that there’s a genuine gap in the market or an imagined market in the gap. Game Production Team Chances are if you can’t find an example, there’s not a market in the gap because someone, somewhere, tried it once and it Unless you’re a really serious gamer who has spent a lot of time never worked. thinking about creating games, we’d recommend asking various companies to pitch ideas. It’s certainly worthwhile if you have enough development budget to pay them, as you’ll get some Budgeting a Game amazing ideas that will inform your choices about what may or may not work. With casual gaming there’s lots of fun to be had. When it comes to budgeting, an app with casual game-play could cost you as little Whilst games can be contained within an app, it’s important as $10,000 dollars. For something with good graphics, interface when developing the game component that you do alot of meet and interaction that can also be played through an internet browser and greets before settling on someone you believe understands can cost up to $50,000. narrative, is a total gaming nut, shares your passion for the subject matter and will deliver. If you’re making a game for hardcore gamers, you need to be thinking of a minimum of $50,000 up to $500,000 and more. By the time you’re engaged at that level make sure you’ve done due diligence on the game production company and the success of their previous games i.e. how well they were received and the numbers of downloads or units sold.
104 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Production firelight 105 EBOOK PRODUCTION reader back to investigate further in their own time. However if the eBook exists to just tell or illustrate a story, then probably less interactivity is needed. eBooks, particularly interactive eBook apps would have to be one of the best opportunities available for leveraging assets into a property your audience can view time and again at their leisure. A Firelight example: eBooks eBooks can take two forms - the kind that are delivered to Kindle and E-readers using traditional text style format with limited With the production of the Storm Surfers - Mission Diaries if any interactivity; and the interactive eBook app which has far eBook, we found alot of time was spent aggregating greater scope in terms of delivering hyper linked text, photographs the content. We were dealing with alot of stills that and video content in an interesting and immersive way which needed to be edited down, allocated to chapters and incorporates interactivity with the interface beyond swiping or adjusted. We then engaged a design team experienced tapping to turn the page and reveal content. in designing traditional books, and married them with a digital production house, experienced in creating To produce an eBook, you need someone with strong writing interactive books. and editorial skills. You also need a team member who is across the possibilities of interactivity and who is capable of making discretionary choices rather than overcomplicating the design.
The production methodologies and tools can be quite varied from the use of a simple Adobe Suite package to something more complicated like Unity 3D. It’s not necessarily an inexpensive exercise but you do need to budget reasonably for the production and delivery. The minimum for a text-based property is still going to be $5,000 (including writing). But if you want something that has bells and whistles, you’ll need to budget around $20,000.
The level and depth of interactivity in an eBook needs to be qualified against who you think will be utilizing it and how much time you believe they’ll spend drilling down into all aspects of the interactivity. The genre and subject matter will answer some of these questions - as is the case with Al Gore’s Our Choice where the storyworld is deeply rich and complex enough to invite the
106 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Production firelight 107 PRODUCING FOR THE INTERNET WEB SERIES
Websites The first thing in producing a web series (i.e. webisodes) is to look at who the audience is going to be, understanding where the As covered in Pre-Production, in the section on All Media webseries needs to be delivered to reach that audience, and then infrastructure, your website is the destination hub for everything working backwards from there. to do with your principal property. It’s amazing what you can achieve with a WordPress site and premium WordPress themes Duration is a key factor in web series. The classic mistake is to and templates range from $20 to $60. make webisodes that are either too long in duration or number too many in instalments. The reality is that most webisodes are going WordPress is pretty self explanatory, so if you have all your content to be consumed on an interactive device, which facilitates your ready such as photos and text, you can populate your site within a audience viewing other content very easily. few hours. If you were to employ someone and had yet to choose an ISP, register a URL, identify your theme and template and put Duration is ultimately going to tie back to whether the narrative the site up, it’d probably take around 8 hours and cost you between within each webisode is compelling. You’ll also want to consider $500 and $1000 (excluding the cost of producing the content). whether your series has an over-arching narrative, or whether you’re delivering self-contained curated stories. Whichever way you slice it, each webisode has to work in and of itself and work as a piece of entertainment. A Firelight example: Websites
We’ve found that spending minimal money on websites Webisode Production Cost and rebuilding and updating them as required works better for us than outsourcing the build. Our approach is In terms of the actual cost of production, it’ll be similar to any shoot to agree upon a basic look, which might just be a font and save for the limitations imposed by the constraints of the story. For background colour, with the priority being to establish an example, does the story only take place in one room, with limited online presence at the beginning of a project and to get set-ups and characters - as with the Lizzie Bennet Diaries? content up and available. Then, as the project evolves and we come to understand better how the product should be You also need to budget enough for your sound mix as a large positioned when the marketing people become involved, percentage of your audience will be consuming this content we either update and reprogramme the original site or wearing headphones, so the sound quality needs to be equal to or repopulate a new one. better than what you might normally deliver for a television show.
108 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Production firelight 109 Leveraging production assets into a web series
In more ambitious cases where you’re leveraging off the principal property’s sets and locations, our rule of thumb is that you should be spending on a per minute basis, much the same as you’re spending on the primary property. If you were to take away the primary property and try and produce the web series independently, it will cost the same.
Rights considerations in a web series
Depending upon territory, rights are an important consideration when producing a web series and can often be as expensive or more expensive than those for your principal property. There are a whole lot of rules around how much you need to pay actors for a global delivery and rights clearance is ultimately, for any web series, going to be global. If you only get clearance on a geo-block basis, you’re going to have a complex journey every time you want to roll that webisode series out in other territories.
Clearance of global rights is, in some instances very expensive. Also, there are rules that apply to the number of runs and residuals for television that are hard to apply across to the web, so you need to take that into account and you need to negotiate for those rights.
One of the things you’ll find that’s interesting is you can often negotiate directly with the agent and establish a deal with the agent that you can then take to the respective union that you might be dealing with.
110 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Production firelight 111 INTRODUCTION
Post-Production can be at once one of the most exciting phases on an All Media production and one of the most crazy. In taking on the production of multiple assets, you are also taking on the Post-Production, delivery and publication of multiple assets. That POST-PRODUCTION means that you are in effect in post, marketing and distribution simultaneously across many of the All Media wrap-around iterations.
Whilst all that is going on, you still have to ensure that the Post- Production on the primary property is not being compromised. It still needs the same attention that it would if you weren’t producing any other assets and in some cases, even greater attention Solving Storytelling Problems...... 114 especially if it’s a truly integrated production with transmedia story Roll Out of Content During Post-Production...... 116 elements. On the flip side, some great opportunities arise when
Post Producing Multiple All Media Properties...... 117 you have multiple creatives working across different disciplines on the different assets that can help with solving story problems on Managing Assets...... 118 the primary property.
There is a great opportunity in Post-Production to truly exploit the assets that have been acquired during production. If managed carefully, the whole team should be able to access all the rushes, cuts, stills, story, artwork, GFX, CGI, scripts and transcriptions and be able to leverage them across each of the All Media projects. However, this means ensuring that your assets are extremely well managed. Perhaps one of the biggest challenges for the producer in Post- Production will be managing the project creatively, whilst keeping under control the logistical and operational demands of having a A Firelight example: Defining the much larger team to what would normally be associated with a Storyworld - fixing the Web series single platform project.
On Storm Surfers 3D, we were post producing a four part However, with good planning at the development stage, the TV series, feature and web series simultaneously. What challenges will be more easily overcome as many of the issues that started out as a project to make a digital magazine soon will arise will have been anticipated. evolved into an eBook as we realised that there was this great storyworld and history behind the evolution of big wave tow in surfing and the Storm Surfers team. The eBook team then started doing profiles on all the main characters SOLVING STORYTELLING PROBLEMS and the guest surfers that had come on the missions over the last seven years and also on the science and behind- the-scenes of shooting a massive 3D surf sequence. One of the things that happens with most productions is you’re going to discover creative story-telling problems that can’t be The web series team were looking to try and find a way anticipated. One of the fantastic things that can happen in post- to package up the various little micro-docs they were production is that you’ve got all your key creatives in one place producing at the time. When we saw the first page plan at one time. If this is the case, you should be able to utilize that for the eBook, we realised that the web series should be creative team to work across each iteration of the All Media project. split and packaged up as a ‘Profile’ series on the surfers and a ‘How To’ series on how to be a big wave surfer. For example, the team working on the webisodes may well discover Problem solved. a great way into a particular story point in the storyworld that can then be used to solve a problem in the cut of the TV series or feature film. Or the editor of the eBook maps out a back story of one of the main characters that helps explain their actions in the film.
This is probably the most exciting phase for the Producer and Director—the lead creatives on the project—because you can harness all of the creative power of the team. I try to encourage each team member to look at what the other people on the team are doing and give feedback.
114 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Post-Production firelight 115 ROLL-OUT OF CONTENT DURING POST PRODUCING MULTIPLE POST-PRODUCTION ALL MEDIA PROPERTIES
During Post-Production, there’s a wide range of content that can The scheduling of your post-production in the first instance will be start to roll out and be distributed as you begin to complete some done by your line producer or your production manager. The best of the more rich media content that you have been creating. The thing you can do in post-production is to bring your post supervisor webisodes or the app should be ready to launch. They might and your post-production house into the picture, because they will contain a whole bunch of rich content including a game, trailer, be very realistic about what can and can’t be done within the time stills and links to your social media. frames that you’ve got.
At this point you need to be involving the marketing and publicity The ultimate person responsible for scheduling the Post-Production team, the distribution team or the network. If you’ve done as much of the All Media assets is the producer and the All Media producer, scheduling as you should have during Pre-Production, you’ll find but you also need to be consulting very closely with any other that the point at which you’ve got to roll out all that content in post- suppliers—like digital production houses or game production production is where your campaign really kicks into gear. houses—because they’re going to have their own time frames and their own needs. Now is the time you need to get your content out, because if you don’t get it out now, it may be too late. There is no point producing One thing that’s changed dramatically with digital acquisition and all these fabulous All Media assets for the wrap-around if they come digital asset management, is that you’re dealing with a much more out after the release of the TV series, the movie or the broadcast of complex set of variables than traditionally with film or tape. Vast the documentary. They need to get out before hand or at the same quantities of data have to be very carefully managed from an IT time as the release. perspective; and that’s something that has to be factored in as well.
If you’re rolling out beforehand, you’re going to be delivering to the Ultimately with your scheduling, you need to be building in buffers fan base that you’ve built. The sooner you have that content out, the for simple things, like the transfer of data. If you need to move five better because you can start to read in real time how your audience terabytes of data, that does not happen in a few minutes. Even if is responding to it, and that can start to actually inform how you you’ve got a ten gigabyte connection, that’s still going to take a might run the publicity campaign for your principal property. day or so.
What we found is that our Digital Assets Manager needed to work with the post producer who was in charge of the delivery materials and the assistant editor to constantly adjust the scheduling across all the suites. There’s a little bit of improvisation as you go, but the
116 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Post-Production firelight 117 best thing you can possibly do is budget for twice as much time as it’s important to dip in to make sure you know how it works because you think you are going to need for each aspect of Post-Production you’re the one who will hold the corporate memory that carries on and be pleasantly surprised you did it in two-thirds of that. beyond the delivery of the project.
Chances are the naming system will alter as the assets are moved across to the digital production house, the game production house, and any of the other suppliers, because they themselves may have MANAGING ASSETS their own language to describe what’s being produced. The same property may end up being named in different ways, but you can overcome it by having a top-line naming system in place in the A Digital Assets Manager handles all the assets at a purely physical first instance. level. One of the things that you need to do with your production manager and your post supervisor (or whoever is managing the Post-Production) is to have a proper operational plan to manage the assets because they’re going to be vast, no matter what. Even if you’re doing the smallest drama, documentary or children’s project – you’re going to end up with a lot of digital assets.
Our approach is to load all the data on a centralized hard drive that everybody can access (and have it backed up of course). We then break it down by individual All Media property, such as app, book, TV series, behind the scenes, EPK etc. Then further again into stills, video footage and sound grabs for each of those assets. If you’re creating an eBook, you can pull all the stills out of the central storage and copy them across into the eBook asset management system, and so forth.
It’s vital at the beginning of Pre-Production to establish an asset management system nomenclature (or naming protocol) that everybody agrees to and be disciplined about using it, otherwise you won’t be able to find anything. The best people to determine the naming system would be the assistant editor together with the digital asset manager, all media producer and finally the producer. The naming system has to be interpretable, otherwise if there is a staff changeover nobody will know what is what. As the producer,
118 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Post-Production firelight 119 MARKETING INTRODUCTION The Marketing phase is one of the most critical and most neglected phases of production for most producers and production companies. Traditionally, producers didn’t need to pay alot of attention to marketing as once the production was completed the producers task was complete. The network or distributor then took
Content, Publicity, Advertising...... 122 over the marketing and the producer had little or no involvement.
Marketing Multiple Assets...... 123 With All Media producing, the roll-out of the content, the social The Marketing and Publicity Team...... 124 media strategy and the relationships with sponsors, talent, Content Roll Out...... 125 audience and fans are all critical to the success of the project. As Creating a Social Media Strategy...... 127 the producer you will need to be involved in all aspects of the roll-
Convincing the User to Engage...... 134 out and as such, you will be involved in the marketing.
Spending Money on Marketing All Media Content...... 136 The Marketing phase also involves publicity, media relationships Budgeting For Analytics...... 137 and PR. A truly integrated All Media campaign will work with these The Project Website As a Hub...... 138 areas seamlessly with the All Media content roll out. CONTENT, PUBLICITY, ADVERTISING MARKETING MULTIPLE ASSETS
When discussing marketing in the context of All Media, it’s always The marketing of different All Media iterations at the same time can useful to look at what differentiates marketing, publicity and be quite a complex and difficult thing to manage and of course content. Marketing is a discrete spend on advertising; publicity you’ve got to be careful. You won’t want to end up with a massive is editorial by a third party about what you’re creating, be it the budget blow-out in your marketing spend. Each of the iterations primary property or the All Media properties; and the content needs their own marketing and the money that you’re spending on release is the specific roll-out of the content that you’ve created. marketing can be very targeted and is often a smarter spend than shotgun marketing (such as an advertisement on TV). We then have what we term the All Media Campaign. Everything you’ve been doing on social media and the All Media content you If you got a million people watching when you put an Ad on have created and are rolling out - regardless of it being genuine television, that’s great and it will have reach if you are trying to get story extension - has been part of your marketing strategy to drive to a mainstream generalist audience. But if you’re talking about traffic to your principal property. It’s been a true campaign in every reaching a particular niche then that’s probably a pretty expensive sense of the word, and an exciting and dynamic one because line of advertising. it will have started well before you get to the point when you’d traditionally be marketing your principal property. Your marketing spend on the digital iterations that you’ve created doesn’t need to be as much as this as you know exactly who In an ideal world, you will have been working as closely as possible you are trying to reach. The cost-per-thousand is a lot lower in with the marketing and publicity teams on the content roll-out. the digital space and can cost as little as 50 cents per thousand Bear in mind that the nature and concerns of the marketing teams users reached. will vary depending upon whether your principal property is a film or TV show. And depending upon your property, the number of So you can cut a deal and know that for $10,000 you are going publicists stands to be huge. They won’t just be your own. to reach 200,000 people who are all into surfing or car racing for example and that’s great value. You still need to be looking at your primary property being the one you must spend the most marketing dollars on but you can also look at integrating the digital products in to that marketing campaign and into a sponsor campaign.
You might be able to bring a sponsor in if you’ve done a deal during the Development or Financing phase where for example, you put a car in the show, then you could put it into a cool little app that you’ve created and it’s integrated in a really fun way. You can then
122 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Marketing firelight 123 have a competition to encourage people to click through to your avoid hiccups, make sure you communicate regularly and involve site - a call to action - and they have the chance to win a car. them in the planning of your campaign from the development Fantastic! And it’s got your brand all over it. stage onwards.
One of the things that you need to be aware of with any sponsorship deal is that you’re not asking them to market your film. They’re in A Firelight example: Storm Surfers the business marketing their product i.e. cars or drinks. They’re not in the business of marketing films. What you’re doing is providing At one point during the roll-out of Storm Surfers there were a vehicle for their product to be marketed. no less than 36 publicists involved. They had to serve their clients (the distributor, the network, the sponsors etc), which was fair enough, however we were the ones supplying the content and we were controlling the roll-out in accordance THE MARKETING AND PUBLICITY TEAM with various complex, exclusivity deals.
In order to ensure clear communications we explained to The marketing team will generally have a much bigger budget than the publicists that ultimately as the Executive Producers the publicity team. They will be looking at a marketing campaign they needed to consult with us first and that it was vital they that may have an agency involved. The agency’s ideas will not followed the agreed strategy, otherwise we’d be stepping all necessarily be consistent with your ideas. As a producer it’s over each other. There was no choice, but for all the traffic important to listen and assess the best approach. But it’s also to come through us and in the end one of our producers important to stick to your guns about what you believe the project was assigned to managing all of the publicists. We all had is about and who the audience is. a giggle when one of the publicists gave them the credit of Executive Publicist Wrangler. Fun!! If you’re working with a Distributor who’s spending a large amount of money on P & A for the theatrical release, the earlier you involve the Distributor and their marketing and publicity departments in the process, the better they will understand your requirements in terms CONTENT ROLL-OUT of All Media production.
There are some general rules for planning the roll-out of multi What adds another layer of complexity is that if there are sponsors platform campaigns that come from heritage media such as and/or advertisers involved, they too will have their own campaign releasing a piece of content once a day, such as a still or a tweet and their own demands and needs around their products. To from one of the cast.
124 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Marketing firelight 125 You should also create a calendar of the roll-out, including story CREATING A SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY points and reactions to news reports, that all parties across the marketing and the campaign are aware of. This will include your publicist, distributor, International Sales Agents, relevant personnel First and foremost identify who the most likely core fan base is within the television network and everybody within the production going to be. This facilitates you growing a fan base through the who is attached to the public face of your production. ‘water cooler’ champions and enthusiasts who love your project and are only too happy to recommend it. If you are able to identify If you have Sponsors who are going to be taking the content to roll- that core fan base - your fanatical fan base - they will do more work out on their own platforms (such as an IP TV channel within their for you than a passive social media fan. Identifying that core fan website), you’ll want to include them in the planning also. They base requires you spending time investigating analytics. might stipulate that their demographic favours consuming material all in one go, so you might need to negotiate exclusivity for key It’s amazing what information is available at the back-end of any press. It’s very important to integrate PR in with your roll out. social media site. Tracking people just requires fundamental logic. Finding and identifying your audience requires you to consider generic age and gender brackets as well as income and education brackets. But at the core, the key thing that’s going to attract your A Firelight tip: The All Media roll-out audience is interest.
Increasingly, there is a consistency to the type and kind of It’s important to put your own head in the head space of your core All Media assets that are produced and the order in which fanatic audience and ask, “What’s going to switch them on?” and content is rolled out. Generally, you will begin with social “How do I reach those people?” And do your research beyond media, stills and setting up a destination website. This checking out Facebook. provides the foundation upon which to move towards richer content. Social media is not the silver bullet that enables you to neglect researching and communicating through other media such as digital The richer interactive content will often be delivered during publishing, newsletters, websites and targeted email campaigns. post-production, so it is likely that it will not be released until Audience creating strategies have to happen synchronously. What’s the second or third phase of the roll-out. The closer you great about combining social media with the research process is get to the distribution of the primary property, the richer the that it helps build the conversation and the buzz. content should become. An approach we use when identifying interest is to think along the follow lines: Fatal Storm, for example, is a film that has at its heart a yacht race disaster. It has a vast audience as there are 800,000 boat owners in Australia. However when it comes to marketing the
126 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Marketing firelight 127 film you still have to find your fanatics. So straight away we set about the project. They may also have opinions about what you’re about making educated guesses so we can research and identify wanting to produce. The same applies to certain genre fan bases our audience. An example might be “people who race on yachts such as sci-fi and fantasy. Social media will help you engage with are my core, niche audience”. They will be the fanatic audience and them. Listen to them, interact with them and they will not only if they love the film and they believe in it then recreational yachties become your fans, they’ll become your champions and help you and leisure yachties will spread the word to everybody who likes find a larger audience. yachting, “Guess what, this is an amazing film project, you really should check it out.” Then if this crowd think it’s interesting, their influence with extend to people into motor yachts who influence the people who’re into the smaller floater boats, then tinnies and A Firelight example: Audience Testing so on down the line. We discovered with Storm Surfers very early on that the This strategy works - but only if you get the people at the start of most important audience in the decision-making process the chain who love yacht racing; otherwise you’ll certainly never in terms of purchasing our brand were women. It seemed get the guy who’s thinking about buying a boat. counter-intuitive to the male surf-adventure story we were telling, but we discovered that women were the best people to bring a male audience to our program. Enlisting Your Fans To Build Your Audience Women are the ones in the household who ultimately make One of great things about All Media is that by making an effort to decisions around family activities. And not just mothers identify who your fans are you can save a lot of money in Marketing. and wives - daughters, aunts and sisters purchase gifts because they like to make people happy – including their You can further enlist these fans to learn about who your audience husbands, sons, fathers, brothers or uncles. Women were might be by engaging them in qualitative testing. Carefully select our best advertising and our best publicity advocates. some of the core fan base you’ve been interacting with on social media, and invite them to come in, watch your project and give feedback. Ask them to bring close relatives who might not have any interest in the subject matter whatsoever. Whilst they’re watching your film, observe their response and make some amazing discoveries.
How you go about identifying and enlisting your fans might depend upon the genre of your storyworld and/or whether it has an existing fan base. If your property is the adaptation of a popular book, your fans and potential audience may come to you once they hear
128 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Marketing firelight 129 Social Media Team Data Base Hitch Hiking
Remember that social media does cost – it costs time and you Digital Marketing involves working with publications and utilising need somebody to be spending time on it. Also, social media isn’t their database so you can directly email people. Partnering up an everyday medium for everyone across every demographic. with magazines and offering content for publicising your property And it’s a feed, so unless your target audience catches the feed, through their database is another option. they’ve missed it. In other words, social media is vital, but its effectiveness can only be realized in conjunction with a traditional Online subscription publications are invaluable as they have marketing campaign, which involves both traditional advertising access to an incredible amount of data and will ensure you speak and digital marketing. directly to your intended audience during your campaign. There are various partnering options available such as content deals, buying advertising or taking over a site for a month. Managing a Social Media Campaign
With our social media campaign, we hire a social media campaign manager and they work for us. We also, ourselves, engage. It only A Firelight example: takes 5 minutes a day to engage with social media and that is not Database publicity a lot of time for the director or producer or other key creatives to engage. If each of the social media outlets had one of the key With Storm Surfers, we worked with Surf Life Saving creatives posting, that’s 30 minutes of time spent pushing content Australia who probably have over a million people on their out each day. These little bits of information on social media going database. We offered them the opportunity to be able to out is going to have an better result for your campaign. screen the film at fund raisers, and in return they publicised Storm Surfers across their database. You can also have a social media manager or if you wanted to take it another step and you have the budget, you can hire whole companies that will manage your social media campaign. You’ve got to be careful you don’t run into a problem of authenticity at that point, because social media has to be genuine. You can’t just put out straight marketing via social media.
130 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Marketing firelight 131 Social Media: There are no rules
In social media there’s a huge amount of confusion and concern A Firelight example: The theatrical around what you should and shouldn’t say on social media. Building market for Storm Surfers out a social media strategy that identifies what content should be released on Facebook is very important, but if you apply too many In the case of identifying the potential market for a film, rules, you’re going to miss out on opportunities that come about it’s possible to use film comparisons. With Storm Surfers, as a result of experimentation and interaction with your fans in we looked at films within the genre and broke down how that space. much money those films made in particular theatres. We also did an analysis on a map of where the best surf breaks were that had nearby theatres and married that data against other documentaries and films in the surf or adventure genre and how they played in those towns. A Firelight experience: Too many rules for social media We then drilled down into the digital marketing capabilities of Facebook and other social media. We On Storm Surfers, we ended up with so many rules about identified particular towns and specific demographics, what should and shouldn’t be said on Facebook that we all the way down to the 380 men interested in surfing, paralyzed our team and nobody was posting anything between the ages of 25 and 65 in Port Macquarie. So we in the end because everybody kept reprimanding one marketed to them through the social media interface and other. In the end I got frustrated and said, “Anybody can then a week before the release of the film, we marketed say what they want with their voice because we know to their wives and partners. what our brand is. We are the most sophisticated surf entertainment brand in the world and everybody on my team is part of that.” So it didn’t matter what language was used because it was the content that was important. Ultimately you need a budget to purchase the digital data that’s out there and have someone analyse it to identify the best way to maximize your audience when you release your film, television show or web series. This cost should be built into your marketing budget. The quality of the analysis may vary in accordance with what you can afford, be it a logical person with skills in statistics and analytics, a company or person you engage on a basis to drive traffic to your website, or an agency you commission.
132 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Marketing firelight 133 CONVINCING THE USER TO ENGAGE Converting Engagement into Screening Success
All of these approaches facilitate conversion if not immediately, The three primary places where your audience – potential or then at a later, more appropriate time. And if you can build in a otherwise - engages with any kind of digital media is: in the home; feature that enables the user to tag your property’s details so they on the phone; and on the computer. can come back to it later, all the better.
When you approach your potential audience via each platform, We can’t stress strongly enough that the purpose of All Media consider all the factors that come into play that might prevent properties is to raise awareness of and drive audiences to your you from achieving a conversion, for example, whether they’ll go principal property. That’s why All Media content should generally to your website to access further information about your primary be free. It’s marketing. In fact it’s marketing that requires advertising property. You can then build safety measures into your approach to reach it’s market – so it’s important that each piece of content so that the consumer can remember the details of your property has its own budget and its own marketing strategy. when they are able to access content in their own time. Hence, if you’re trying to seduce an audience segment through This is why All Media is such a good strategy because it engages your game, advertise your game in a space that’ll reach people and seduces users through a variety of platforms and media, who play games through a gamer’s magazine or on a YouTube across demographics, at varying times of day, potentially around game review site. The same applies to each and every element of the world. your All Media wrap-around.
An example of this is to think about the attention span of a commuter on public transport and whether that’s the right time to Keeping your Fans Engaged deliver content to them and if so, what kind of content and how - via their mobile phone probably, but in what form? A tweet, an As much as possible, we make sure we answer every single SMS, an email, advertising on a game platform, an endorsement question that we get asked through our social media sites. We try by a YouTube superstar…? as much as possible to respond to comments that people make when engaging on those threads. That’s your five minutes a day. Depending on who they are, they may or may not be interested in So once you’ve put up your post, if it suddenly gets great traction engaging with your film or TV property directly. However they might and 5,000 people have liked it, you are going to have loads of be inclined to read their Twitter feed and visit your website via a comments and you’ve got to engage. recommendation; or play a game in your storyworld and remember the name of the cool movie it’s based on; or watch their favourite The more you engage the more the other people engage - including YouTube star and follow up on their endorsement of your property. with criticism. If there’s criticism and you respond positively rather than in a negative way, you can turn it around and you’ll get an
134 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Marketing firelight 135 incredible result. We’ve found with internet nasties, when they say BUDGETING FOR ANALYTICS really nasty stuff, as soon as we engage with them they come back and apologize. They’re just calling out to be loved. You’ve got to be very unlucky to have someone that is so vitriolic that they keep You need to be spending a reasonable amount of time on analytics. going. If they really keep going and they’re really annoying, you just In budgeting terms, whoever is running your social media, your delete them. website and so forth should be at least dipping in once a day for 15 minutes or so to have a look at what’s going on with the analytics and utilize that information.
If you have a long term campaign that’s running over a couple of SPENDING MONEY ON MARKETING years, it’d be worthwhile budgeting for someone who’s an expert to ALL MEDIA CONTENT once, every few months highlight any trends and suggest strategies.
One of the best things is that social media gives you incredible When budgeting the marketing of the all media iterations, there access to data about the people who are out there on that social are different ratios you can apply. Ultimately the best ratio you can media platform. However the question around whether it is the be apply is a 1:1 ratio. For every dollar you spend on the eBook, you all and end all of your marketing is a really simple one, it’s not. It still spend a dollar on marketing it; the same with the game, app and needs to be supported by other content. so forth. I think when it comes to webisodes, you can give them a nice push really easily through basic digital marketing mechanisms that are inexpensive.
But where you should spend your money is not just on advertising in terms of marketing, it’s actually on someone getting out there and pushing for subscriptions and pushing for people and engaging with people who might comment and so forth.
One of the things to be thinking about with social media is making sure what you’re posting is new and original and gives your fan base something more.
136 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Marketing firelight 137 THE PROJECT WEBSITE AS A HUB
In our experience, we have found that making the website the hub of everything around the primary property you’re creating is the most successful strategy. You have to be sending people back to the website to get to what they want because a single Facebook post doesn’t deliver anything except a comment.
If you want them to engage, you need to include in your post a link that in one click will bring them back to your content. You want them to go to your website and find what it is they’re looking for as fast as possible. They want to go “I want the app” or “the game“ or “the book” or “the TV series” or “the movie” and they can just get it in one mouse click. They’ve got to be able to find it in one place easily.
You won’t believe this, but the number of times we’ve gone to a website for a film to try and find out where it’s on, when it’s on and to buy a ticket and can’t find a single link for the single most important pieces of information. This is incredibly common.
“I want a ticket.” A really simple thing. In two clicks, “I want a ticket” and one more click and they are purchasing a ticket at their local cinema online.
138 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Marketing firelight 139 BACKGROUND
Storm Surfers has become one of Australia’s most successful and endearing All Media brands. The current franchise includes 6 x 1 hours of television documentary (4 hours in original 3D), 1 x 95 minute theatrical length movie (both in 3D and 2D), 30 webisodes, 2 games, a 140-page eBook, soundtrack album and a massive social media presence with nearly 13 million online page impressions. STORM SURFERS
A CASE STUDY WITH ELLENOR COX, MARCUS GILLEZEAU
& ESTER HARDING
Written by Evelyn Saunders
See: www.stormsurfers.com.au to get to all Storm Surfers content Storm Surfers is an epic, real-life adventure following two best CONCEPT friends, Aussie tow-surfing legend Ross Clarke-Jones and two- time world champion Tom Carroll, who enlist the help of surf forecaster Ben Matson to hunt down and ride the biggest and most In 2010 the second film Storm Surfers - New Zealand was completed. dangerous waves in the Great Southern Ocean. At around this time, the theatrical 3D market was booming and 3D TVs started to appear on the market. The marriage between Directors Justin McMillan and Christopher Nelius of 6ixty Foot big wave surfing and 3D was an obvious one and development Productions, approached Firelight in 2007, to assist them with of the next iteration of Storm Surfers in 3D and as an All Media taking their big wave surfing adventure concept to the next stage. project commenced. Before 2007, the team had produced three one-off fully brand funded (Quiksilver and Red Bull) documentaries that had received When conceiving of an All Media project, it’s useful to look at the limited distribution. distribution channels to ensure there is both a path to market and an audience for your content. Marcus Gillezeau and Ellenor Cox from Firelight brought not only expertise in factual content, but also a passion for All Media Storm Surfers 3D had the benefit of a pre-existing fan base keen to delivery and franchise building. Firelight put together a five year re-engage once more with the brand. Distribution channels were business plan and strategic All Media plan for the development of this time extended from a television only outcome to include a Storm Surfers with the directors and key talent. theatrical release version.
The title and branding for Storm Surfers was conceived and Discovery Channel Asia became a co-production partner in two further one-hour documentaries (Storm Surfers: Dangerous Banks and Storm Surfers: New Zealand). Strong international sales of these two properties into 100 plus countries ensured that close to 20 million viewers became familiar with the brand.
With its dedicated international fan-base, time-specific action, pop science and technology, the brand had become an ideal vehicle for extension across multiple platforms and these two documentaries were augmented by a series of webisodes and a simple game app.
142 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Storm Surfers firelight 143 DEVELOPMENT The treatments for the feature film and TV series were written and the development of the All Media extensions (the App, eBook, Webisodes, Social Media) commenced in tandem with The aim during the Development phase was to look at creating script development. unique content for each platform and each audience demographic and to capitalise on the diversity of the characters’ experience. An All Media Producer, Ester Harding, was employed from this stage onwards. Together with producers Marcus and Ellenor and Development focused on creating genuine narrative extension the team from digital production house Explore Engage, a number which not only provided insight into the lives of the stars and of workshops were undertaken to brainstorm a wide range of ideas characters in the TV Series / Movie but also extended the and possibilities for apps, games, webisodes, e-magazines and immersive experience of 3D filmmaking by taking the content out cross platform engagement. of the television / cinema screen and placing it in the hands of the audience. In 2011, the team did an intensive three day workshop facilitated by XMedia Lab at the Opera House where mentors and experts The development phase identified the following potential All Media from around the globe engaged with the team to contribute ideas. iterations for Storm Surfers: All of these ideas were then re-worked back into a final proposal and budget that could fit within a realistic finance plan. • 95 minute adventure / bio-pic feature documentary
• 4 x 1 hour factual entertainment television series
• 10 x 2 minute How-To Series
• 10 x 3 minute Profile Series
• Game for iOS and Android mobile devices
• eBook for iOS and Android tablet devices
• Rich media website
• Extensive social media and partner website marketing campaign
Marcus Gillezeau - doing the deal
144 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Storm Surfers firelight 145 In April 2011, Storm Surfers 3D was successful in receiving a grant FINANCING from the Screen NSW DMI (Digital Marketing Initiative and now known as IMF) for various All Media extensions to the project. Marcus Gillezeau travelled extensively during the development Sadly this fund no longer exists. period shoring up investment support from various sources around the world. Matched investment for this fund came from Explore Engage, a digital agency that built the Storm Surfers big wave surfing game. The initial budget for Storm Surfers 3D was around $3 million and the project moved into pre-production early in 2011. During Screen Australia provided production investment and accepted production additional financing and partners were sourced with the Arclight as an international sales agent along with Red Bull Media final budget around $6 million. House as the agent for Europe.
Financing partners required different outcomes. TV pre-sales from new dedicated 3D Channels in the US (3Net) and UK (Sky3D) wanted as much content as possible and invested in a 4 x 1 hour TV series.
Red Bull Media House came on board first for the movie and then agreed to pre-buy the TV series offering both investment and a pre-sale for their German speaking channel Servus TV.
In Australia the plan was always to create a theatrical 3D movie and Madman Entertainment offered a Distribution Guarantee for Australia and NZ rights.
Post production services facility Deluxe came on-board as a post production partner and offered an investment in all aspects of the project. Fulcrum Media cash-flowed the Producers Offset tax rebate.
The producing partners agreed to roll their Producer’s Offset The production team with director Chris Nelius. margin back into the budget to fund the All Media elements and the marketing campaign.
146 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Storm Surfers firelight 147 PRE-PRODUCTION PRODUCTION
Pre-produciton was lengthy on Storm Surfers due to the 3D Storm Surfers 3D was an incredibly challenging project to make. Research and Development (R&D) testing requirements and the Filming took place from January 2011 through until December 2011 extended financing period. with a full-time block from April – October. R&D on 3D acquisition and 3D post-production workflow continued throughout the entire During this time, the All Media team were able to continue with duration of production as camera technology and editing systems the development and financing of the wrap-around. It was also an were continually evolving. ideal time in which to start engaging with the various investors, broadcasters and distributors to determine the strategy for the roll- Directors Christopher Nelius and Justin McMillan did an incredible out of the content. job to secure 1500 hours of 3D footage that was shot at nine different surf locations around Australia and one shoot in Hawaii. Producer Marcus Gillezeau attended a number of key events to The production utilised seven different camera types and three shore up distribution, exhibitor interest, digital platform interest different bespoke 3D camera rigs. The editing system settled upon and potential sales. These included American Film Market only became available in September 2011. (AFM), MipTV, the Australian International Movie Convention and the Storyworld Conference in San Francisco along with the key Interstate shoots involved moving 23 crew and over a tonne Australian conferences. of equipment to remote surf destinations often with only 72 hours notice. In terms of planning for the production of the All Media properties, the scheduling of production ran alongside the scheduling for the main unit. Similarly, the budget management, reporting, logistical planning and testing also ran alongside the main unit. Broadly, the team aimed to completely integrate the production of the All Media assets and to ensure that enough content was acquired during production.
Heading 75km out to sea for the final mission on Storm Surfers 3D.
148 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Storm Surfers firelight 149 A dedicated All Media crew worked in tandem alongside the main The TV series and the feature film also had to be edited concurrently, unit capturing material for the webisode series. This crew worked with the ability for editors to simultaneously access the same closely with the All Media producer and producer who were material. Many of the post paths and editing solutions for enabling continually reviewing and evolving the story ideas for the All Media this to occur were considered world class and the post team at iterations and the stories for the eBook. Deluxe, Spectrum and Storm Surfers deserve a special mention for this achievement. A genuine feedback loop between the main unit production team, the post production team, the All Media team and the audience During the production of the movie and TV series, a dedicated 2nd that fed in to the ongoing conceptual development of the project. unit All Media crew also wrote, shot and edited a 20 part webisode The focus and aim of this was always to ensure that what was series, with ten webisodes being in native 3D. being created had a specific audience in mind and a clear path and distribution channel to reach that audience. The All Media team also worked with Explore Engage for eight months on the creation of a big wave surfing App Storm Surfers During production of the TV series and movie, the All Media Big Wave Hunters (available for download to all Apple and Android producer worked with Explore Engage on the development of the Smart Phones). A 140 page eBook ‘Storm Surfers Big Wave app and ensured that extensive stills were being secured for the Missions’ was also created for iPad which showcased all the eBook and website. previous Storm Surfers missions as well as the current ones in Storm Surfers 3D. Towards completion of the Production phase, the website and social media campaign were launched and regularly updated. The existing Storm Surfers website was overhauled and the social media campaign launched during the shooting period to encourage a growing fanbase in the lead up to the film’s release. A soundtrack album was also created and released just prior to the film’s Australian premiere. POST-PRODUCTION
Post-production commenced in March 2011 and continued through until July 2012. In order for the team to ensure the material was technically acceptable, all 1500 hours ( x 2 for 3D) had to be perfectly frame matched (260 million frames) and accessible on drives right through to final delivery.
150 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Storm Surfers firelight 151 MARKETING Costs specific to the tour were reduced via sponsorship from sponsors such as Carlton Dry, Yamaha, Quiksilver, Sony and Red Bull Australia. Advertising was limited to digital spend only and The 4 x 52 minute TV series was massive mainstream publicity was garnered with 100’s of pages of delivered to 3Net and Sky3D by publicity generated. May 2012 and went to air in the second half of the year with both Two weeks out from the August 14th release all 30 shows were sold networks promoting it as their out across Australia with a $240,000 Box Office already banked. ‘flagship 3D series of the year’. Cinemas who had previously exercised a wait and see approach to Storm Surfers 3D now extended the film’s screening into a 6ixty Foot Films (the Production traditional release pattern which ended up with the film screening Company) co-distributed with in approximately 70 locations. Madman on the theatrical release in Australia in order to remain Storm Surfers 3D continued to screen regularly in cinemas from mid heavily involved in all aspects of August to mid October with some cinemas such as the Cremorne the film’s marketing and release. Orpheum, Sydney running the film for over 20 weeks.
It was agreed that rather than a traditional release pattern, Storm The DVD release was in February 2013 and initial sales were Surfers 3D would emulate an old fashioned ‘surf film tour’ with strong. VOD and DTO sales occurred simultaneously and were the stars Tom Carroll and Ross Clarke Jones making themselves similarly successful with the title currently available on Fetch TV, available for a 30 screen, six week tour across Australia. Madman Foxtel Digital, i-Tunes, Hybrid Television Services, Sony Network subcontracted Ice Edge Marketing to co-ordinate the tour. Ice Entertainment and Quickflix. Edge run the annual Warren Miller tours.
The Australian release date commenced in mid-August with a six week marketing lead up www.stormsurfers.com.au became the portal site for all ticket sales and showcased the wide array of All Media assets to accompany the film. The back-end of the site fed directly into each cinema’s booking page but was updated and maintained by Storm Surfers 3D staff. Over 40% of ticket sales came directly from www.stormsurfers.com.au
A ‘Grommets on the Ground’ campaign engaged fans in each of the 30 locations to put up posters and flyers.
152 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Storm Surfers firelight 153
DISTRIBUTION OTHER ANCILLARY RESULTS
One of the highlights of the Storm Surfers 3D project was seeing how positively the film was received by both men, women and Festivals children as young as five! It had always been a core aim of the production team to provide PG family entertainment that everyone Storm Surfers 3D has had an extremely successful festival result. found engrossing and inspiring and that the film was perceived as At the Toronto International Film Festival it came First Runner Up ‘much much more than just a surf movie’. in the Audience Award for Best Documentary and demand was so high that an additional screening was conducted. Press for the film was overwhelmingly positive with Margaret Pomeranz giving it 4 stars. Paul Byrnes made a special mention of At San Sebastian, a sold out audience of 1100 viewed the film in it as one of his highlight films of 2012. The film is currently rating 3D on a 60ft screen. The US première was a red carpet affair at the 5 Stars on iTunes and the fan feedback via the film’s website, Arlington Centre in Santa Barbara and the film also screened at Facebook, Instagram and Twitter feeds is overwhelmingly positive. San Luis Obispo.
Storm Surfers 3D screened at the Doha Tribeca Film Festival, the Fribourg International Festival (Switzerland) and the Riviera Maya Film Festival (Panama).
In Australia Storm Surfers 3D screened at the Noosa Surf Film Festival and Surfworld International Film Festival where it won the major prize of the Peter Troy Spirit Award.
Awards and Nominations
• Storm Surfers 3D has been nominated for and has won numerous awards: Storm Surfers fans lining up around the block at the Randwick Ritz. • AACTA 2012 Best Feature Length Documentary – winner
• 3D International Society Best Achievement in Documentary 2012 – winner
• SPAA Interactive Producer of the Year 2012 – winner
154 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Storm Surfers firelight 155 • Australian Surf Awards Film of the Year – winner • It was broadcast as interstitials on 3Net (US) and Sky3D (UK), available OTT on the Sony Bravia 3D • AACTA 2012 Best Cinematography in Experience Channel and Yabazam (Global). a Documentary – nomination • It is being rolled-out to 3D enabled mobile devices (Global). • AACTA 2012 Best Editing in a Documentary – nomination • It is used as unique content (in 2D) for • ATOM 2012 Best Documentary – nomination supporters, sent via eDM. • APRA 2012 Best Documentary Soundtrack – nomination Profile series All Media Exposure Utilising behind-the-scenes, outtakes and purpose-shot footage, During the Storm Surfers 3D marketing campaign it is estimated the Profile series is a huge asset. It allowed audience members to that close to 1 million people engaged with the bespoke online ‘get-to-know’ the stars and invest further in their journey, raising content created. The film trailer has had more than 200,000 the emotional stakes and encouraging them to share the stories views alone. with other friends who may not think Storm Surfers 3D is for them. • The series was intended for release via YouTube and as To date the app has been downloaded close to 22,000 times and collateral for partner sites (including Red Bull, Quiksilver etc), the eBook is now approaching 2000 downloads. as well as broadcast interstitials on Servus TV (Europe).
The Facebook page has nearly 20,000 fans. • It was used as a genuine narrative extension for fans and newcomers keen for a greater insight into the ‘off-camera lives’ of the main characters. How-To Series APP – Storm Surfers Big Wave Hunters From ‘How to Tow Surf’ to ‘Survive a Wipe out’, this series is a slightly tongue-in-cheek look at the methods behind the Storm Built entirely in Unity 3D software, the audience is invited into the Surfers madness. underwater headquarters of the team and given a weather mini- • It was purpose-shot in native 3D, to create material for game to enjoy, before being invited to join Ross Clarke-Jones and marketing / brand building in territories with access to 3D Tom Carroll on big-wave surfing missions. Completing Jet Ski, devices but little knowledge of the Storm Surfers franchise. tow and surfing challenges, players feel part of the adventure. The game is another first for Storm Surfers, creating a new pathway • It was presented by lead characters Ross Clarke- into the storyworld to appeal to the next generation Storm Jones, Tom Carroll and Ben Matson. Surfers audience.
156 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Storm Surfers firelight 157 • The app was designed for iOS and Android Social Media and Web smartphone and tablet distribution. Using social media as a tool during the tour of the film around eBook – Mission Diaries Australia, our social media and web strategies connected fans to Ross, Tom and the team throughout the theatrical release. Providing another genuine narrative-extension for the Storm Surfers • Took the key lesson: “be interested as well as interesting.” storyworld, the eBook is a rich-media, interactive experience aimed at a sophisticated, engaged audience. It utilises: • Engaged with content / ideas / updates relevant to the Storm Surfers 3D world and drawing audience • Photos from the Storm Surfers missions archive. attention to other fun / cool / fascinating content. • Motion graphics from the TV series and theatrical feature. • www.stormsurfers.com.au • Profile pieces on members of the Storm Surfers team. • www.facebook.com/stormsurfers • Unique perspectives on the making of the series. • @stormsurfers (Twitter) • Detailed explanations of the technical • www.youtube.com/stormsurfers challenges of producing a documentary. • #stormsurfers (Instagram)
Marcus Gillezeau and Ellenor Cox - Winning the Australian Academy of Cinema Television Arts Award 2013
158 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Storm Surfers firelight 159 BACKGROUND
Written by Gabrielle Lord, Conspiracy 365 is a young adult novel franchise of 12 monthly instalments. Publisher, Scholastic, had just commissioned the series when it came to the attention of Circa Media’s Linda Klejus. She optioned the series and took the concept to Peter Jenetsky at the Australian premium television movie service Movie Network Channels (MNC). MNC was looking to re- brand the Family Movie Channel (FMC) as of January 2012 and CONSPIRACY 365 Conspiracy 365 ticked all the boxes in terms of target audience, an existing fan base and a multi-platform rollout across social media that would act as an important storytelling tool whilst promoting A CASE STUDY WITH LINDA KLEJUS, MICHAEL BRINDLEY, MARK the FMC and driving traffic to it.
SHIRREFS, ANTHONY MULLINS & PETER JENETSKY
Written by Evelyn Saunders and Marcus Gillezeau DEVELOPMENT Key Tips – Development commenced in October 2010, with writing workshops • Identify and extrapolate upon how you’re going in December and the series and episode outlines were completed to expand your storyworld from the beginning in February, 2011. The series was formally commissioned in • Resource your multi-platform strategy March, 2011. with funds and personnel Michael Brindley and Mark Shirrefs were the series story producers • Create a tight, integrated marketing and distribution with Shirrefs doubling as Multi-platform Story Producer. They began model for reaching and building an online audience work deconstructing the novels “January” through to “December”, and then constructed 12 x 48 minute webisodes.
Anthony Mullins, Hoodlum’s Multi-platform Writer and Creative Director, attended the series development process helping writers think about how the story could be executed across other platforms. A core requirement was the creation of unique content that was easy to share. The team realized the hero’s father had CONCEPT come close to solving the mystery before he died, so they created and told his backstory through 12 x 4 minute webisodes. When In exactly 365 days, teenage fugitive Cal Ormond must solve the joined together these webisodes form a prequel that complements mystery of the “Ormond Singularity”, a family secret that took and builds on Cal’s journey. the life of his father and links Cal to the Virgin Queen of England, Elizabeth I. Mullins wrote the webisodes working directly within the story department. Across the various platforms they added news Whilst the core storyline centres around Cal, the multi-platform segments tracking Cal’s movements; a virtual phone, where users delivery broadened the storyworld to encapsulate a strong female could log in and hear phone messages left for the hero; and a video character and historical elements – criteria that met the family diary created by Winter, the heroine. The writers felt that Winter target market. would connect particularly with a female audience and wanted to make that happen. Cal’s Vlog, a one-minute piece to camera every month was another addition that enabled the writers to relay what the books did so well: Cal’s thoughts and feelings as a kid on the run.
162 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Conspiracy 365 firelight 163 From the start all of the webisodes were laid out in a story outline ADDITIONAL CONTENT PRODUCED version, as were the news reports and Winter’s dossier. The show was treated as the primary content, “the mother ship” that could exist entirely on its own as the producers believed that’s where the Content beyond the principal property was included online at biggest audience would be. It had to make sense for people who the destination website, Youtube, Facebook, on-air (MNC) and didn’t go online. contained within an app. The All Media wrap around consisted of:
For those that did dig deeper, they were rewarded with a wealth • 12 part Webisode series of online content. According to Michael Brindley, “…The online • 12 Cal Vlogs content doesn’t appear in the books at all… (it’s) an inference from the book, ‘if (character) did this, then (character) must have done • 12 Winter’s Dossier videos that’, so we’ll put ‘that’ in the online content and ‘this’, that’s in the • 12 story inspired news reports book, in the show.” • 13 “Interactive Environments” (1 prequel, 12 in-season) One of the biggest adaptation challenges was that the books are • Regular text and voice messages from characters told from Cal’s point of view, which would’ve exhausted the actor. • User generated video By changing the point of view they were able to expand, jump in time and go other places – all the time asking “Is this scene about • Story inspired polls, quizzes, puzzles Cal even though he’s not present?” • 12 Behind the Scenes documentaries
Another consideration was updating the material in such a way as • Exclusive TV Preview and Recap videos to capitalize on social media. Kids in 2012 are on YouTube so Cal’s • Photo Galleries blog became a Vlog – with some of the material appearing in the • Countdown to Conspiracy 365 Screenings episode and the rest made available online. In consultation with the writing department, MNC also created complimentary content • Basic MNC EPG in the form of “Case File 365” to market the series across MNC. • Links to external content and communities Online video content can be viewed at: http://www.youtube.com/ (MNC, iPhone app, Facebook, YouTube) user/conspiracy365/videos • Program details • Facebook Wall discussion prompts • Personal Progress page so users could see what content
they’d consumed and what content was remaining
164 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Conspiracy 365 firelight 165 FINANCING PRODUCTION
MNC fully financed the series. According to Klejus, “most Australian Production commenced June 20 and finished December 16, 2011. drama is between $800,000 and a million dollars an hour. Because According to Klejus, multi-platform added a level of complexity we haven’t wasted a lot of money on financing we’ve got more to the production they didn’t expect. Negotiating with cast and money to spend on the production.” She was of the opinion capturing the rights to their performances was an expensive that Conspiracy 365 was “probably the highest multi-platform exercise to undertake. budget of any Australian drama series” enabling them to embed a multi-platform specialist in the production from the beginning. Production planning had military precision: Hoodlum had a content According to Peter Jenetsky’s case study, at $13m investment, capturing person collecting stills and assets every day; webisodes Conspiracy 365 was the largest ever subscription television drama were shot, edited and material sent up to Hoodlum once or twice a production in Australia. The multi-platform investment consisted of week. The main unit shot around 120 minutes of additional material approximately $1m in additional content creation and digital assets. - almost three episodes. Only some elements such as the news reports were carved off to an occasional second unit shoot. The multi-platform component was treated as part of the main budget. Circa produced all the narrative, so they shot the narrative webisodes, dossiers and Vlogs. Hoodlum produced the non- narrative online content out of Queensland and provided cost reports to the main budget. POST-PRODUCTION
Klejus produced the webisodes to the same broadcast standard as everything else so it wasn’t like ‘that’s the main shoot over here PRE-PRODUCTION and multi-platform and online is over there.’
The roll-out of the online content was handled by Hoodlum over Pre-production took place in May, 2011. The shoot was scheduled the 2012 calendar year. Their involvement in the project was across as three blocks of four episodes. The webisodes, also shot by some two and a half years. main unit, were plotted out to be complementary (i.e. webisode one is relevant to episode one etc), facilitating the efficient use of resources.
166 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Conspiracy 365 firelight 167 MARKETING and book clubs; as well as book retailer cross promotion. Books were given away as prizes and MNC had media access to author Gabrielle Lord to support the launch of the TV series. In terms of the novel, Conspiracy 365’s fanbase was 10-16, evenly distributed across male and female. For MNC, the property MNC marketed Conspiracy 365 across its various subscription promised a locked-in viewership through subscription retention channels. They also brought in an independent production company and upgrades as parents responded to their children’s enthusiasm. to produce Case File 365 – a short form series of interstitials - to On top of that, social media stood to attract a new audience as it be the voice of the show and act as a conduit. The lead character, turned viewers into fans and the curious into subscribers. Bardy, contemplated questions that would help audiences unravel the mystery, whilst pointing them to online destinations for exclusive Part of the mandate was that all materials on the website be easily multi-platform content. Case File 365 was screened on FMC, it was shareable and publicly available. It was important that the ancillary available on YouTube and funded independently by MNC. video content be easy to find so that traffic could then be directed back to the principal property. YouTube provided the answer.
Facebook’s social media strengths was similarly utilised with cast announcements being made on the FMC Conspiracy 365 page to attract and sustain an engaged audience prior to production. DISTRIBUTION
The multi-platform strategy had two objectives: (1) to build the “January” the first episode in the series premièred Saturday tween audience for the broadcast and keep them engaged, excited January 14, 2012, with subsequent episodes screening on the first and loyal for 365 days; and (2) to promote the series. The marketing Saturday of each month through to December. Catch up sessions wasn’t limited to the internet and the TV series, the producers had and screenings of multiple episodes became available as the series also utilised the property’s original platform i.e. the novel series in progressed to benefit new subscription audiences. Further drivers further cross-promotional bids with publisher Scholastic. to FMC included Episode 1 enjoying a limited release window on YouTube; and a staggered release on iTunes from the second half The novels were re-released with cover artwork that featured the of the year. actor, a driver to the series, FMC, the show’s URL and Foxtel. Further information about interactivity could be found on the back The rollout strategy for broadcast and online mimicked that of inside cover, with production stills contained within the book itself. the book – one episode per month accompanied by a release of MNC also acquired inclusion in monthly marketing to the Scholastic interactive content. This bold programming decision was made Conspiracy 365 fan database; involvement in Scholastic book fairs with the intention of keeping an audience engaged for a whole year. There were 365 pieces of content released across 13 instalments – 1 prequel followed by 12 in-season. Each content release was
168 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Conspiracy 365 firelight 169 designed to sustain the audience for the 30 or so days until the audience reach of the principal property therefore, was limited until next episode and release of content. Some members of the the episodes were commercially available by which time the hype audience would devour the content in one hit, others would have generated by the wrap around would have abated. a more relaxed approach; motivations varied from wanting more of the show, to wanting to be the first to experience the content, to It’s important to remember also that the average TV series has a wanting to savour the experience – it was up to the individual. three month campaign prior to the release of weekly episodes. The marketing spend after the premiere drops because each episode Some of this content was gleaned from Peter Jenetsky’s case study to Film takes on some of the marketing role. The monthly release strategy Victoria at: http://www.film.vic.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0015/21246/ employed with Conspiracy 365 whilst true to the novel series’ Conspiracy-365-Film-Vic-Casestudy-PJ-final.pdf rollout (a book for each month of the year), was highly ambitious as it had to maintain audience interest and marketing momentum.
FMC met this challenge by instituting a heavy pre-promotion campaign for each new episode and scheduled multiple plays SUMMARY in each month and, there was also the app and online elements. However whilst the show was reported to be a success for FMC, one has to wonder how much more successful it might have been Conspiracy 365’s All Media wrap around certainly ticks all the boxes. on free-to-air television where anybody and everybody could It maintains the rules and pressures of the novels’ storyworld and access the principal property and enjoy the full wrap around expands upon them to create new story elements across multiple experience that was on offer. platforms. This strategy was designed to appeal not only to its established audience, but speak more comprehensively to the female tween sector and draw in parents. In other words, it fished where the fish were and met its audience where it lived.
However, there’s a certain critical mass All Media projects need to achieve to have a self sustaining publicity drive. Yes, the All Media content was available online to anybody - established fans and new - and, these elements were designed to be spreadable across social networking platforms to draw in new audience members.
Yet the principal property (the series) was housed on a premium tier of a subscription TV platform making the main event highly exclusive and, quite possibly, out of the reach of many of the champions the novel series would have already recruited. The
170 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Conspiracy 365 firelight 171 CONCEPT
Britain From Above was inspired by Google Earth and the idea that you could be anywhere in the world, plug in your address and zoom down into your location. The central tenet was about the hidden secrets and patterns you can only see when you look at something from above. The concept was very much story led: What could you see from above that changed your perspective?
Produced in 2008 by Lion Television for public broadcaster BBC, Britain from Above was a complex project delivering three hours for BBC1, three half hours for BBC2, an hour for BBC4 and a major website for providing the content online. Deliverables also included BRITAIN FROM ABOVE a book and a DVD. Development A CASE STUDY WITH KIRSTY HUNTER
Written by Evelyn Saunders and Marcus Gillezeau DEVELOPMENT http://www.bbc.co.uk/britainfromabove/about/ Rick Shaw (Head of Development, Lion) and development researchers found the initial stories and Kirsty Hunter (Head of Interactive TV, Lion), her interactive producer and other members of the digital team, wove multiplatform aspects into the treatment. They brainstormed how it would look online, how it would geo- locate content, how multiplatform would change the proposition for the web, Red Button interactive TV and mobile.
They developed the proposal in tandem, laying out potential running orders of episodes, contributors, presenters and so forth. The process was overseen by Nick Catliff, one of Lion’s managing directors, and he and Rick then pitched it as a joint proposition to the BBC Factual Department. FINANCING Key Tips –
Lion is one of the BBC’s key suppliers in the UK. Eighty percent of • Plan how everyone will work as a their work is for the BBC, so they have regular routines with BBC cohesive unit from the outset commissioners. With Britain from Above, they didn’t shoot a teaser • Where possible have the same personnel tape or provide storyboards, rather, they provided a very detailed work across the various platforms sixty-page treatment. • Have a platform agnostic series producer sit across all of your properties Emma Willis (a BBC commissioning editor) had been looking for big factual ideas that were about national identity and about Britain. • For a substantial project have two production Excited, she brought in Nick Cohen, the Multiplatform Knowledge managers sit across the properties Commissioner and they commissioned the project in tandem. • Engage an archive producer to research Cohen brought his own budget to the project and Willis fully funded material for all properties the TV series. According to Hunter, “The web budget was around 14% of the TV budget.” The two budgets were combined and • Physically locate your team as practically Britain from Above was run as a multi-platform production. as possible next to each other • Deal with properties in order of deadline • Work closely with the client to maintain a coherent voice and strategy regarding deliverables • Collaborate with your post production house early in proceedings to identify the format of your assets coming in and determine deliverables going out. • Regularly discuss the audience’s user journey with publicity and promotions to ascertain the best way to release content within and around the network. • Whilst traffic figures might not always be available, success can be measured by taking into consideration: impact, critical acclaim, achievement of educational objectives and the long tail of the project. www.bbc.co.uk/britainfromabove/archive
174 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Britain From Above firelight 175 PRE-PRODUCTION The team was also physically located next to each other (eg the interactive producer sat next to the television producer) to facilitate sharing assets and information. Hunter, an experienced multiplatform strategist, recommends planning how everyone will work as a cohesive unit from the With regard to the book, the team had initial editorial meetings with outset, “even though it seems torturous and it seems to take a long Anova, the publishers, after which they went their separate ways time, spend time planning those aspects, your production and your to create their own products. Anova had to create a property for post-production particularly. It makes it much more seamless, and someone to read as a coffee table book - a much different proposition it also helps to have the same personnel working across different to online and getting people to lean forward and interact. platforms.”
From day one a series producer sat across all of the platforms, overseeing BBC1, BBC2 and BBC4, inputting on the web, the DVD and the book.
“It (the series producer) became a hugely important role because everything was as important as each other. She was very much agnostic in terms of where the resources went because she was juggling everything.“ (Hunter)
Two production managers also sat across everything. The DVD and the book were separate budgets but they ran all the budgets together, combining the money but reporting separately back to the BBC on the TV and web aspects.
An archive producer was engaged to research all the material for the television series as well as the web. Hunter advises taking the same approach with assets, agreements and talent, “When you engage your presenter you should be thinking ‘what do I need them to do for the web?’ -it needs to be incorporated into the same deal.” The same applies to music.
176 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Britain From Above firelight 177 PRODUCTION On the BBC side there was a commissioning editor, a technical project manager and a design lead who worked with Lion on all the deliverables. Hunter’s approach enabled properties to be dealt with according to deadline. Typically the website came first. According to Hunter, with multiplatform production, “Who’s supervising who and how the content or deliverables are being “If you’re building a website it probably has to launch signed off by the client, are important considerations.” With two or three weeks prior to the show going out. Britain from Above, all of the video content was being signed off Already you’ve got a compressed schedule and you by Television Commissioning Editor, Emma Willis - even though need to start designing pretty quickly at the start. We the budget had come from Knowledge Multiplatform. Hunter had our web designer brief the TV graphics company worked closely with Willis and the series producer (who sat across and the opening titles house on the look of the whole everything) to ensure they had a coherent voice and strategy about series. From the start we had one cohesive voice over what was being delivered to the BBC. ‘what is this about’ ‘how is this series going to look’. The web team were involved in those discussions With regard to the book deal, there was a certain amount of and also leading those discussions.” (Hunter) deliverables Lion needed to provide such as stills and information for their author to work with. These requirements were integrated Map specialization was a high priority for the project. On the BBC’s into the series’ production so that a stills photographer would recommendation, Lion outsourced technology to Numiko, an be shooting for both the web and book media. The website agency based in Leeds. To build the website, Numiko had a project team worked quite closely with Anova to ‘ring-fence’ some stills manager, some developers, and a lead technologist. The project exclusively for the book. management system “Basecamp” enabled everyone to know what the other was doing regardless of location. “It was important for us that the website didn’t become television on the web, and we didn’t want the book to Lion’s dedicated interactive producer was responsible for finalizing become the web in a book. So we had people who are all of the site’s content including ‘Rewind’, the strand which told the leaders in their fields in each of the platforms, taking story of a particular place through historical aerials. A dedicated what they needed from the central pool of content and video producer produced a lot of the ‘behind the scenes’ content from the idea - the central idea of Britain from Above - and a bit on ‘Rewind’. There was the designer, a web copyrighter but then translating it for their own platform.” (Hunter) who rewrote all of the content required for the site; and three video editors employed at various stages to cut the stories.
178 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Britain From Above firelight 179 POST-PRODUCTION MARKETING
Hunter was conscious of the importance of managing post- Britain from Above had a project team that included not just the TV production work flow. Rather than risking digital becoming the poor Commissioner but also the Multiplatform Commissioner, Publicity, cousin to TV, the team sat down with their internal post-production Promotions, Picture Publicity - and they all met as a group once house and discussed the sort of assets that would be coming in, a fortnight. the sort of deliverables going out, and what would be happening in the middle. They had approximately twenty different formats “This proved to be the key to getting everyone’s coming in (VariCam, lipstick cameras, DV) and had to deliver five buy-in across the ‘beast’ that is the BBC. The team and a half of HD material for BBC transmission, and 120 web clips. put a lot of consideration into the user journey and how the audience might discover the experience, “We worked out that we would ingest everything not just online but around the BBC universe.” at DV res, which is good enough for the web so we wouldn’t have to end up doing an online or a grade or “We were trying to think about how we would move a mix, a formal mix. That brought the cost down. We people around the network so they’d hear about the had something like seven edit suites going at once: a show. They’d maybe taste a bit of the content, they’d couple doing BBC1, two doing BBC2, one doing BBC4 come to the site, start exploring it and then they’d and then two doing the web - and we would all be watch the show, (or) if they missed it or if they wanted sharing the same media and material.” (Hunter) to watch it again they could go to iPlayer.” (Hunter)
Basecamp assisted with version control, documentation and Andrew Marr, the series presenter, was interviewed numerous transparency as everyone across the project could read the posts times for Radio Times and the Sunday Times. A lot of the content and messages. was placed online for people to explore as a linear experience prior to the series going to air. There was also the catch-up service on iPlayer. Working very closely with BBC publicity, one of the first things Lion did when they launched the series before transmission, was to give BBC News clips to feature on the BBC News broadcast.
“One of those was the iconic clip, the data visualisation of taxi-cabs in London. (It) had 250,000 views on the BBC News website after it had gone to air. We quickly realised we had a bit of a hit on our hands.” (Hunter)
180 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Britain From Above firelight 181 The clip aired on the Saturday, the site launched on the Monday sat on BBC.co.uk for people to access via the site, it could be with all of the behind-the-scenes content, all of the Rewind content pulled into Google Earth and watched there. According to Hunter, and the clips from the series. The BBC didn’t have an issue with “If someone wanted a piece of video they could put it on their own putting everything up a week before transmission. blog or on their own site.”
“It built a buzz around the show.” (Hunter) This approach was a huge success and they found people who’d gone to the site to watch a clip they’d heard about - such as the taxi’s around London and then stayed for half an hour because it was easy to jump from story to story in a non-linear journey through the video content.
DISTRIBUTION Britain from Above went out on BBC1 and BBC2 for three weeks, followed by the BBC4 special, which stayed on the iPlayer for another four weeks post-transmission. It’s success was reflected Lion was in a unique position in that the show and the website was in it being the most watched program on iPlay the day after the fully funded by the BBC. The distribution model was effectively show went to air each week. about distributing in and around the BBC network. They didn’t have to think about getting further funding from distribution. “They were getting massive spikes on video-on- The brief from the BBC was to redefine the documentary online. demand on the Monday as word-of-mouth spread about Lion addressed this by focusing on was the idea of ‘how to index the shows. Traffic to the site was spiking on Sunday content’ and ‘how to create a seamless experience’. They worked nights and Mondays, but then steady during the week hard on the user interface to achieve that. with other spikes around transmission.” (Hunter)
The designer’s vision had been to create a video rich, immersive Whilst traffic figures aren’t available, Hunter believes it’s impact experience without text, where the user could consume the content can be measured by the fact it achieved its goals: impact, critical they were interested in, without having to watch a linear program. success, educational impact and a long tail. The knock-on effect To achieve this, the Content Management System (CMS) was built proves the success of their distribution strategy. entirely from scratch by Numiko. A lot of consideration was given to the back end - what assets were needed on particular pages, “All of the video content on the site was shareable and how it would work and the easiest way to input and update content embeddable on external sites. The British Geography (the stories, the video, the slideshows, all of the assets); as well as Association took all of the clips and created a standalone how it looked on the front end. Jaron Ghani, the Lead Technologist education site with learning materials wrapped around was also key in thinking about how the content would be shared – how people were going to use it. As a result the content not only
182 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Britain From Above firelight 183 the video content. Now, every single fifteen year old According to Hunter, the advent of mobile and tablet apps has also in Britain who studies geography watches the clips had a huge impact on the television and content market with this on the Britain from Above website.” (Hunter) trend likely to continue well into the future.
This was something they’d intended from the outset. Lion licensed “It’s no longer the case that people don’t get it, it’s the clips on the site for ten years to the BBC – no geo-blocking. the case that you need to be thinking about how Britain From Above won the Digital International Emmy for Non- are you going to use those platforms to disseminate Fiction in 2009. or distribute your content. And obviously your content… it can’t just be television. (Hunter)
Which points to exciting times ahead in the area of All Media content creation and delivery. CONCLUSION
Britain From Above is a fine example of an All Media project that from the outset, seamlessly integrated its development, production, marketing and distribution processes.
The model used to produce, market and distribute this property is also worth considering when working with public broadcasters to deliver documentary content to a mainstream audience. It demonstrates how cross promotion of All Media iterations across a variety of media and channels can drive traffic to the various experiences and ultimately the principal property; the news clip data visualization of London taxis and the ability to pull content into Google Earth being a case in point.
“I don’t think there is the option anymore to ignore other platforms outside of television. Your audience is splintering and they are consuming content wherever they want, whenever they want.” (Hunter)
184 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Britain From Above firelight 185 BACKGROUND
An All Media success story, Heroes is an example of a large US network reaching out to the audience through All Media. The Heroes world or universe played out across the TV show, web comics, wiki sites, satellite websites for characters and organisations, online scavenger hunts, mobile strategies and fan sites. With first season ratings for the TV show all coming in at over 10 million viewers per episode (topping 16.03 million at season high), there were also millions of people engaged with the All Media content.
HEROES Heroes’ executive producer Tim Kring, has written and produced some of the most successful serial TV Shows in the United States. Making his start in TV as a screenwriter for TV shows and A CASE STUDY WITH TIM KRING (2012) telemovies in the 1980’s, on shows like Knight Rider and Teen Wolf Too, Kring went on to write and produce major TV shows such as Written by Marcus Gillezeau and Amanda Keeling Chicago Hope, Providence, and Crossing Jordan, before beginning development for Heroes in early 2006. We Can Be Heroes: Tim Kring for the Future of StoryTelling 2012 Key Tips –
• Fish where the fish are – find out where your audience is and meet them on those platforms.
• Build a closer relationship with the audience – allow them to become part of the narrative.
• Build funding for All Media into the production or show budget.
• Plan for a large uptake of the All Media content and be willing to work with fan created content.
• Collect content as you go and use what you have.
• Forge partnerships with brands https://vimeo.com/61269956 and the ‘new distributors’.
This 10 minute video is a brilliant interview with Tim Kring about the • Multiplatform content doesn’t just promote the show, future of Storytelling and the projects and the All Media projects, it promotes the broadcaster and their other shows. he has worked on.
This video is from the Future of StoryTelling summit and can be found on Vimeo. The summit is a one-day, invitation-only event that aims to further our understanding of the art and science of communication in the 21st century and beyond. The inaugural FoST summit was held October 5, 2012. Top thinkers and practitioners from diverse fields gathered to explore current evolutions and revolutions in the creation, marketing, and consumption of information.
188 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Heroes firelight 189 CONCEPT ground for this brave new world of integrated storytelling that had never been tried at NBC. The team tried all sorts of ideas from webisodes to websites for companies and characters in the show. The idea of working with content outside the television format came Kring recalls that the Heroes team became this kind of factory from the realisation that there was a very limited relationship with for making ancillary content. “We had this very deep cannon that television audiences and that this lack of connection was behind burrowed deep into of mythology of the show, so it lent itself sliding ratings. While working on Crossing Jordan, the network wonderfully to all this kind of content,” says Kring. asked Kring to come up with show material that would live online. The problem was that Crossing Jordan was a procedural drama and there seemed to be very little scope for online content. Kring vowed that if he ever got another chance to step up, he was going to figure out a way to forge a better relationship with the audience. FINANCING Kring’s resolution was to ‘fish where the fish were’. He decided to simply try to go wherever the audience was, ‘to cast a line and tell Due to the network’s mandate to reach audiences on a number a story there’. In the planning/development phase of Heroes, Kring of platforms, Kring’s team were living in a very idealised and rare saw an opportunity to experiment with this idea of building a closer situation. Kring remembers, “At the time there was no pressure to relationship between the show and the audience. Heroes had a justify how it was meant to make any money.” It was deemed to comic book genre base, and the idea was to run an online comic be promotion and marketing for not only Heroes itself, but for the book concurrent with the show. “I went into the network with the NBC.com division, the platform that was also promoting NBC’s idea that I was going to try and make a show that had a relationship other shows. with the audience; that had a little bit more of a dynamic feedback loop between us and the show,” says Kring. The material that didn’t According to Kring, multiplatform content is mostly funded or make it into ‘the mother ship’ of the TV show, would live online. ‘cobbled together’ with found dollars between marketing, promo, and brand money. However, he feels a better way to plan financing In a remarkable case of being in the right place at the right time, the for multiplatform content is to literally, ‘bake it into the production mandate from General Electric was that the network, NBC, was to budget’ so it is not an after thought or overlay on top of the figure out how to reach their audience on multiple platforms. Kring traditional budget. walked in with a show that had a big splashy comic book feel that suited the demographic that was on multiple platforms. Brand funding came when Sprint and Nissan approached NBC to On the day Heroes was picked up the NBC.com division consisted sponsor webisodes and other All Media content. of seven people. Three weeks later, there were 67 employees in that division. Heroes became, in essence, a kind of beta testing
190 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Heroes firelight 191 Kring estimates that around 2.5% of the overall budget went to MARKETING the production of the digital aspects of the show. The value of the NBC.com department that helped out with the ancillary content for Heroes is not included in this percentage, but would have lent There is an interesting line in Hollywood between All Media significant staffing and resources to the production. content production costs, and promotion and marketing costs. If a studio or network deem a production activity to be marketing Asked about the value of online engagement and audience building and promotion, there is less impact on the profit participation through ancillary content verses the number of eyeballs on the TV agreements. In other words, it is cheaper for the networks. show, Kring believes there’s real value in the All Media content, however for the networks, it’s still all about the show. For broadcasters launching a new show, the priority is getting the TV audience. Once the numbers start looking good, then the dollars “The studios actually make the product and they can for All Media content may become available. Kring’s contention is sell DVDs, sell a property into syndication and sell that the ancillary content creates new audience members for the merchandise. The networks are the single source of show and vice versa. Kring thinks it’s hard to see where production revenue business. They only make money one way. ends and marketing begins, “We’re doing this to generate more They sell ad time so for them it’s all about the mother and more interest and enthusiasm – to make the fan and audience ship of the show until they see some real value in the participation in the show deeper and richer.” number of people who are engaging in this stuff.”
Kring points out that some networks believe that the audience that will engage in the digital realm or with ancillary content of a show, is the audience they reach anyway through the TV show. It’s something of a chicken and egg scenario that can be drawn out POST-PRODUCTION by the fact that significant numbers of people engaged with the Heroes ancillary content. By March 2007, The Heroes Evolutions It was clear that Heroes would need more resources and staff website had 48 million page views. Millions of fans found and than a traditional TV show, along with crew members specifically created Heroes content online, with 2.5 million fans joining the dedicated to the All Media content. The engine room was the Heroes Official Facebook page. These people were consuming writer’s room. The story lines for Heroes were all generated and sharing content online and drawing, one would hypothesise, in the writer’s room but Kring hired four full-time people for the significant numbers of viewers to the principal property both within transmedia or new media division. Their job was to come up with the USA and across the world. This hype should not be undervalued the extra content, liaising between the Heroes writing staff and the as it would’ve drawn exponentially increasing audiences to NBC.com engine room of coders and web designers. Kring recalls, the property. “There was no wasted piece of content. Anything that fell out of the ship of the show could then have a life on some other platform.”
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NBC.com had literally thousands of pages of content to inform, DISTRIBUTION entertain and engage fans. The audience members were encouraged to interact with the show’s characters online and through mobile connections. Fans could receive texts from Kring believes that one of the ways to turn the tide and to make real characters asking them for help, could create and submit artwork, money from storytelling across multiple platforms is to forge new mash-ups, suggestions for new characters and concepts that partnerships across networks, brands and distributors. Kring’s feel would become Heroes online graphic novels. There were widgets, good project, Conspiracy for Good (2010) is an example of brand news updates and original Heroes content that fans could tailor for integration, with Nokia willing to become part of the narrative rather their own home pages and blogs. than front and centre.
One of Kring’s most important lessons from Heroes was the speed As a storyteller, Kring was looking for tools to help him reach people at which the All Media audience consumed content and their and to communicate with the audience. A big tech company like demand for new material. After several years of stretching his team Nokia had interesting tools that aid storytelling. “It works if you can to produce additional content, Kring realised the only solution was partner with a brand, platform or distributor that can actually speak to create a situation where the Heroes audience could generate to their customers - somebody that has thousands of customers content for themselves. Kring believes when it comes to fan that they can push content to with a press of a button,” says Kring. audiences, it’s less about creating content and delivering it and Leveraging free promotion for your show by tapping into partner more about giving the audience a world that they can inhabit. It’s Facebook communities, advertising dollars and promotional spend about creating a world that’s increasingly social and allows the should be part of the deal. audience to become inserted into the narrative in some way, to participate in the world of the show. With networks, deals like this are often difficult to navigate. Although the money is out there, Kring points out that there’s a lot of old world business butting heads with the new world. The sales departments at networks want to land the deals with the major brands, rather than having All Media producers win the pitch. With new business models emerging, Kring wants to give all the options a go and would rather find partner dollars to fund multiplatform content. His plea to the networks is, “We don’t have to pay for it. Just give me permission to go out and shake the trees.”
Kring notes that some brands have done this themselves, building content divisions to better connect with their consumers.
194 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Heroes firelight 195 “There are brands that are now ready, willing and able to almost become broadcasters themselves. Brands like Red Bull are making huge amounts of content and closing content deals. AT&T and Starbucks are out there too. There is now real business to be had out of going directly to the brands themselves for sponsorship of this content. Working with Nokia on Conspiracy was certainly an example of that.”
THE FUTURE
Kring believes that in the near future the electronics and technology companies who are beginning to equip themselves with the ability to become broadcasters may offer up some real challenges to the networks. Delving deeper, Kring comments that the most interesting aspect of All Media storytelling as we move forward will be the data that companies will be able to acquire.
“The data is going to be the new gold. Who are these people in the audience and what are their behaviour and habits?”
196 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Heroes firelight 197 BACKGROUND
Cate McQuillen, co-creator of dirtgirlworld delightfully described the dirtgirlworld experience as a blended animation and live action All Media project for kids about growing vegetables. But for those of us in the know, it’s far more than that. It’s a number one rating show that evolved from Cate McQuillen and Hewey Eustace’s award winning album of 20 songs, a dedication to permaculture and education and, a passion for making a difference. dirtgirlworld is all heart and you can check it out at a variety of online sites, one of them being YouTube.
Prior to perfecting the concept and approach, Cate and Hewey DIRTGIRLWORLD packaged their music CD and story concepts to networks and television shows they believed were a good fit. This strategy INTERVIEW WITH CATE MCQUILLEN garnered good wishes but no results. Feeling that perhaps the time wasn’t right, they decided to trial another concept “Hit It”. It was whilst pitching this to Disney that the executive noticed the Written by Evelyn Saunders music CD and on hearing Cate’s impromptu pitch, suggested they develop something to illustrate the concept. It’s from this point that dirtgirlworld.tv dirtgirlworld took shape and a multiplatform life. dirtgirlworld has subsequently won numerous awards including:
• 2013 International Digital Emmy; Key Tips – • 2010 AFI (AACTA) Award for Best Children’s Television Animation; • Wear your heart on your sleeve.
• 2010 Australian Director’s Guild Award • Don’t be scared to show how passionate for Green Production of the Year; you are about your project.
• 2010 Australia Day Award for Culture and the Arts. • The people who connect with your story are ‘people’.
• Physical, creative and financial stamina is vital, so look after yourself.
Nominations include: • Small teams become big teams to make big things happen. • 2010 BAFTA for Children’s International Production of the Year • Take time to look carefully at agreements • 2010 Prix Jeunesse Festival, Munich and ensure everything is in place to protect all parties, especially yourself. • 2010 Logie for Outstanding Children’s Program • Everything will cost more than you think. “Never in their realm of possibility did it occur to us we’d have this success. dirtgirlworld wasn’t and isn’t about that. • Budget properly for your overheads. But it’s nice that something with such a beautiful heart • Allow your brain to just go to places – don’t has been recognised and, that’s lovely. “ (Cate McQuillen) be scared to dream and write things down.
• When discussing digital concepts – keeping it simple is really good advice. It’s keeping it simple NOT keeping it boring.
200 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing dirtgirlworld firelight 201 CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT
“…It’s about a girl with a big head, kind of When it comes to dirtgirlworld being an All Media production, animated, and there’s dirt.” (Cate McQuillen) mememe productions had always seen TV as an entry point rather than a facilitator for the whole raft of experiences. Cate’s delightfully honest about her impromptu ‘pitch’ to Disney. She says if she’d had more experience pitching at this level, she’d “The broadcaster’s role is to love the TV and supporting have asked for development money then and there. web content; it’s not up to the broadcaster to understand and be across everything.” (Cate McQuillen) Never-the-less, after reflecting with Hewey on how they’d entered a post An Inconvenient Truth world, they decided the time was ripe With this in mind, Cate and Hewey created a massive map of all to make eco-logical-tainment. the stories and ideas they wanted to communicate. They looked at the way kids play, learn and watch as well as where they do it and “…For people who are like us… who want to tell how they do it. They identified that their audience is split: (a) the stories, the basic premise is: we protect what we child audience and, (b) the parent audience who choose what their love. If kids can never go outside, if they can’t stand kids watch. in a forest, how can they ever protect it? How can they take their love for the characters in the TV Identifying where parents play, watch and interact to obtain show and move it into reality?” (Cate McQuillen) knowledge for their kids, Cate and Hewey then assessed where they wanted to have story, where the values of the show would be Which is a whole lot why dirtgirlworld is about sustainability and the best reflected and, all the different ways and media they could use environment; and possibly why part of the dirtgirlworld experience to tell the story. They then matched the strongest value with the involves planting seeds! strongest use of each platform and itemised the experiences they wanted to develop. In line with this ecologically friendly approach, mememe productions refuses to do any merchandise and licensing that isn’t As technology developed, the process continued to evolve and sustainable – they closed the door on that route to market. “But numerous iterations emerged. Taking into consideration that many that,” says Cate, “is a good thing,” as this was a path they didn’t of the fans don’t read, the experiences for the children are voice want to go down. Similarly, their policy extends to not advertising and vision: to kids; they’ve taken an atypical licensing path.
202 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing dirtgirlworld firelight 203 • dirtgirl as you see her on TV; An example of this is dirtgirl being local ambassador for rubbish at certain councils. Vehicles were painted white with dirtgirl and • A cookie cutter web-based avatar that lip-syncs to media scrapboy’s image on the side so kids could wave as their rubbish on dirtgirlworld Club where the kids can create an avatar was collected. There’s also the dirtgirl and scrapboy newspaper of themselves and join in (clubdirtgirlworld.com); print and radio show campaign “Let’s Talk Rubbish”, podcasts and, • The live action version of dirtgirl played by the actor on TV; a compost caddie for houses. This initiative was hugely successful and exceeded one council’s target of recycling and composting • Live entertainment event versions played by 67% of potential landfill. female artists in a dirtgirl wig and outfit with accompanying Bee Band (rock band);
• The dirtgirlworld App and Happy Snapper (camera) with 3-D augmented reality version of dirtgirl;
• Early childhood sustainable curriculum with dirtgirl and scrapboy presenting on Interactive White Boards (coming soon to preschools);
“We feel like the luckiest people in the world because we have this beautiful story, an international audience and a million tools to connect the story to. Especially since technology, modes of delivery and audience became aligned between the initial release of dirtgirlworld in 2009 and (what Cate calls) ‘the great year of 2012’. For example if we’d released everything on day one, we would’ve used Flash.” (Cate McQuillen)
204 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing dirtgirlworld firelight 205 FINANCING PRE-PRODUCTION
To develop the concept Hewey and Cate sold their assets and The Pre-Production process involved creating a digital style guide paid over $100,000 for a little over a minute’s worth of animation. for the look and feel of the show as well as rules for dirtgirlworld The Regional Film Fund from Screen NSW allowed the hiring of which have been subsequently demonstrated across all platforms. regional crew to shoot live action footage in the Northern Rivers An example of this is the way everything a user/player “clicks” on region. mememe productions obtained a coproduction agreement is sticky-taped down. with Decode Entertainment, a Canadian producer. The ABC, the Canadian Broadcasting Commission as well as the BBC and its Pre-Production also involved identifying the best software for children’s channel CBeebies, commissioned the project. Financing liaising with creatives across multiple cities and countries given this took a year, followed by two years of animation to make Day 1 was a coproduction. Cinesync software from Adelaide proved to be of broadcast. the solution. It enabled users to draw on frames or illustrations in virtual meetings so that everyone could see the result, write notes Mememe productions wanted to create a really successful, and understand what was required in real time. It also meant that sustainable business in all sense of the words: sustainable as a broadcasters could view the episodes in their own time and write business but also, sustainable on the planet. They set up a number notes. According to Cate, 127 hands touched the project between of licenses (such as for their live shows) and in some cases they her verandah, overseas and back. She and Hewey couldn’t have are the licensee as well as the owner. They’re also an aggregator done it without the technology. on iTunes. Cate says none of this is a big golden cloud, but the system enables them to take in little bits of money to keep them All 300 props were built on Cate and Hewey’s property and they ticking, so they can grow the business in such a way as to keep had six artists living there for six weeks to do it. “Everything the content flowing. characters touch is real,” laughs Cate. The budget was so tight that in one episode they built a bicycle because to buy it would’ve The dirtgirlworld business model also extends to incorporating cost a third of the budget. sustainability targets with financial partners. (more on this in “Distribution”) Meanwhile Hewey created all of the music.
When it comes to pre-production on other iterations of dirtgirlworld, Cate and Hewey write all the live shows even though they’re licensed to other companies.
206 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing dirtgirlworld firelight 207 PRODUCTION POST-PRODUCTION
The production model followed a fairly traditional coproduction Online and digital assets that can’t be produced in house are created arrangement. However, nobody had created 52 episodes back to by a variety of different studios in rural and urban settings around back of this style of show before, so they were flying by the seat of the world. These studios are chosen according to their strengths. their pants. Data management became a key consideration and it was vital to not lose a shot. The Editor was onset (often running the As for the social media aspect of dirtgirlworld, rather than train a clapper board), so able to select shots as soon as they came out of social media expert in the nuances of the character, they trained the camera and deposit them straight into a rough. dirtgirlworld actor, Maree Lowes in social media – so the kids really are talking to their hero. Maree works part time every day keeping Animation took two years – the average time for an animated in touch with her fans and releasing bits of content. product. Cate and Hewey coproduced and wrote the episodes and sound track. Things didn’t go quite to plan in that some of the All Media elements Cate had envisaged weren’t ready to launch on Day 1. However this was because they were so busy working on the production itself. In retrospect Cate believes that had they built the All Media budget into the production budget and had an All Media producer at entry to TV – things would’ve been different. mememe productions involved the local primary school in the shoot, engaging the students and using the school’s fabulous garden as a backdrop. The school also has a history of winning animation prizes, so dirtgirlworld provided a new camera and editing facilities for the grade 5 and 6 students to film the making of the show, while the younger children are in the show itself.
During production mememe productions appointed an Assistant to look at sustainability and reinforce this value in everything the production did. Initiatives included rewarding crew for car pooling, crew washing their own plates and establishing a sun farm to offset carbon emissions. This approach has not only been good for the environment, it’s bonded the crew in a positive, pro-active way.
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MARKETING DISTRIBUTION mememe productions’ approach to marketing covers a number of The TV show, online components, social media, live shows and bases including where to find its audience, and how to best reach traditional DVD, books, greeting cards, scrapbooks, clothing and them without reinventing the wheel. jewellery merchandise – are all part of dirtgirlworld’s distribution strategy and integrated marketing campaign. mememe productions Cate’s aware that there are parents with kids on their knees either run these elements themselves or they’ve been licensed to checking out social media sites such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter people who take care of the sustainability criteria, such as with and Pinterest for dirtgirlworld information; as well as parents who Madman’s bid to distribute dirtgirlworld DVDs using compostable want to be able to download dirtgirlworld now via online media plastic. (Winning this contract resulted in Madman introducing a libraries such as iTunes. dirtgirlworld has a social media presence recycled paper ethos into its own business plan and subsequently on all of these platforms and supplements this approach with winning a sustainable business award). Similarly the game that The traditional marketing methods such as newsletters, media blogs Project Factory is building for dirtgirlworld, is being offset by Cate and everyday publicity. and Hewey’s power grid.
Whilst the company doesn’t have the marketing budget of other In screening terms, most of the broadcasters around the world childrens edutainment businesses such as the Wiggles, they’ve have a seven-year license on the show. It works for everyone as achieved much through partnering with and supplementing the broadcasters get a lot of runs all year for seven years; and the marketing campaigns of other eco-friendly / sustainability dirtgirlworld’s audience is continually being replenished. According businesses. Examples include dirtgirl’s involvement with World to Cate, the audience grows in and out of the show within six Environment Day at school eco carnivals, National Tree Day, the months, so they have a flood of audience for a good two or three Sustainable Living Festival in Melbourne, her ambassadorship solid years between the ages of four and seven; with children with Clean-Up The World Weekend and the Australian between the ages of seven and twelve loving it because they have Conservation Foundation. All have been perfect vehicles for younger siblings, and may be growing a garden. reinforcing the sustainability / eco-logical-tainment theme of dirtgirlworld; and with social media sharing, a happily symbiotic The screening cycle on the ABC is along the lines of 52 episodes relationship. dirtgirl is a great way to attract new people to the played seven days a week, with a four to six week off-air period cause through example - dirtgirl’s recyclable plastic gardening before the next screening cycle. The series is run approximately tools being one such illustration. six times every 14-16 months which means mememe productions has the opportunity to observe, assess and respond to audience demand. As Cate says, “We can make great successes from mistakes because we have a long time on air.”
210 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing dirtgirlworld firelight 211 dirtgirl also has a variety of online presences: CONCLUSION
• ABC4Kids: which features a number of interactive games including the chicken jam where kids can dirtgirlworld is an inspiring example of getting it right; of how being put a photo of their face on one of the chicken band passionate about something important can resonate at a world members, compose a song and dance to it. level. Cate describes the All Media process as ‘talking to all the fingers on the same hand – because they are on the same hand. You • dirtgirlworld.tv: (which redirects to ABC4Kids) includes Dirt then need to work on all of the fingers putting in energy and effort, Girl Scrap Book; 10 sustainability games; a virtual garden agreeing on a time line, following the paths to communication and where you plant and manage slugs; and a catchup player. talking through ways to be more cohesive.’ • dirtgirlworld.com “We haven’t reached a level of transmedia yet where we • dirtgirlworldshop.com.au realize we’re all in the same family.” (Cate McQuillen) • clubdirtgirlworld.com Part of this process in Australia, involves addressing marketing • iTunes budgets and making them a substantial component of the project as a whole. • Facebook
• YouTube
Cate and Hewey also made great a success out of living away from the cities; the demands of distance helping them find creative ways to connect and distribute dirtgirlworld. As mentioned, dirtgirl attends events, however if organisers can’t afford this or there are other mitigating circumstances, dirtgirl can Skype in or record messages that can then be sent to everyone’s iPhone. She’s a true product of the modern world that ‘inhabits’ the world, whilst being a positive force for awareness and change.
212 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing dirtgirlworld firelight 213 BACKGROUND
Beth Connolly is a 16 year old who has just moved to the mysterious suburb Reservoir Hill with her mother. Along with missing her friends, boy problems and the separation of her parents, everyone around Beth seems to find her unsettling.
Soon, Beth discovers she is the spitting image of a girl who went missing a few months before. This sparks a whirlwind of intrigue as she strives to find more out about what is really going on in Reservoir Hill. http://www.abc.net.au/abc3/shows/14598.htm RESERVOIR HILL A CASE STUDY WITH DAVID STUBBS & THOMAS ROBINS
Written by Evelyn Saunders and Marcus Gillezeau http://tvnz.co.nz/reservoir-hill/ta-ent-index-group-2985476
Watch: Interview with creators http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFvqhcsXKxM
Watch: Excerpts From Show: http://khfmedia.com/projects.html CONCEPT Key Tips – “Beth arrives in a place called Reservoir Hill. She • It doesn’t matter how good the show uncovers a mystery and then bounces around in is if no-one knows its there. that world, following her nose. With the help of • Story is number one, don’t her mates (the viewers), she’s going to sort out overcomplicate the interactivity. and discover what the mystery is.” (Stubbs)
• Online doesn’t mean the budget is David Stubbs and Thomas Robins were interested in creating an 8 smaller; crews charge the same so webisode drama series at the same time Television New Zealand create broadcast quality content. were promoting ‘video on demand’ (TVNZ Ondemand). They • A serious broadcaster or platform that has the pitched a set-up, a storyworld about Beth using the public as allies money to back the show makes life easier. to find out what’s going on.
• If you can get it, sponsorship and Stubbs and Robins liked the idea of being able to relate to the lead advertising money is gold. character and interact like you were part of the story – the obvious way being through social networking. TVNZ had the largest teen • A line producer or production manager audience in the country so they saw promise in developing across all content is important. something for teenagers, female skew, that was a bit edgy and had • If you want to cut together a broadcast telefeature, genuine drama. ensure your series has an overall dramatic arc. The creators believed for a program to be truly interactive it wasn’t • Forge partnerships with brands possible to script it in advance. For the pitch they explained how and the ‘new distributors’. the interactivity would work, who the crew were, their history and • Multiplatform content doesn’t just promote the show, what they’d done. They had a budget and provided a schedule it promotes the broadcaster and their other shows. of what they’d be doing each day, per week, over eight weeks. The proposal included a sponsorship strategy for the third of the budget that would not be covered by the fund. New Zealand On- Air came on board and the project received digital content funding.
216 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Reservoir Hill firelight 217 DEVELOPMENT One of the criteria of the NZ On-Air deal was accessibility, so making revenue through premium SMS was not possible. They also had to make a free option available so they added a virtual phone on the Stubbs and Robins had a brief in as much as they were given a website where players could type a message and hit send. target market and, direction regarding the hero; they came up with everything else. They were attracted by the idea of friends texting friends to help each other out.
They wanted the web series to have a classic arc so that if the episodes were watched together it would have a good beginning, PRE-PRODUCTION middle and end. Stubbs and Robins were very aware of the need for good production values. According to Robins their philosophy was “just because we were making it for the web doesn’t mean that we don’t need a good crew or to shoot on HD.” The decision paid off as they received compliments at MIP and Cannes for picture quality and FINANCING performance. It also meant they had broadcast quality material for the telemovie they pieced together at the end as a bonus for the Robins has an advertising background and was aware of the broadcaster. match between a teenage audience and their interests, social marketing and teen issues. They approached the New Zealand Transport agency which promotes road safety and the Alcohol Liquor Advisory Council that operates in the interest of moderate drinking. Some characters and storylines were developed around these concerns, but not in an overt way as they knew the audience PRODUCTION would switch off. Webisodes ranging between eight to ten minutes went live at 5pm Sony and Telecom were also perfect sponsors as every time Beth, each Monday afternoon. The schedule was so tight across a seven the lead character opened up her phone the audience would see day week there was no room for error. the kind of phone she had and that she was with Telecom. She also had a Sony TV. “Once you jumped on this machine, you couldn’t get off until it was finished.” (Robins) TVNZ’s investment included promotion and advertising of the show as well as the build of the website.
218 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Reservoir Hill firelight 219 The script would be written, finished and signed-off on Wednesday/ POST-PRODUCTION Thursday. Thursday would be the beginning of a prep day with the script signed-off by the Network late that day. Friday was the organisation and prepping of additional cast, art department and Post production was very much caught up in the tight production scheduling for the Saturday shoot. Cutting occurred on Sunday cycle. A popular feature was the audience becoming characters and was sent up to the Network that evening for a 7pm/8pm sign- in that their texts were put on screen. It’s possible this factor off. Sound design and score composition would occur Monday to influenced everybody treating the site with respect so that Stubbs be delivered by 3pm for the mix. This would be laid up against the and Robins had no need to be heavy handed with moderation. image, rendered and stuck on an STP site for TVNZ to download at 4pm. The webisode went live at 5pm.
The audience would watch the show then text their responses regarding what Beth should do. Stubbs and Robins would monitor them as they came in then on Tuesday night/Wednesday someone MARKETING would determine the general consensus and identify a text that said it all so it could be featured in the next webisode. Scripting would One of the reasons Reservoir Hill was successful was that TVNZ begin Wednesday morning and the process would start again. regularly promoted the on-line experience on free-to-air television. TVNZ also set up magazine articles and there was a radio The experience also included blogs and vlogs by other characters, competition: “watch episodes and answer questions, and you’ll get which Stubbs and Robins created and fed back up to TVNZ to put to appear on one of the days.” They had the biggest teen audience on the site. A writer acting as the online Beth character interacted in NZ and during the school holidays promoted “first online drama, with individual viewers thanking them for their texts in such a way you can help her out, starts Monday.” as to have them feel they were being spoken to directly. It was an intense process. Stubbs and Robins wrote the bi-line and worked out a strategy for how to market the show. They also made a spec commercial “…We did it for two years and got away with and gave it to the network suggesting they do something similar to it, you know, …writing, shooting and post promote the show. producing an episode every week.” (Robins)
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DISTRIBUTION Stubbs and Robins kept the worldwide rights and won the Qantas Film and TV Award for Best Youth Program - proving that an online series could transfer to TV and win an award. The telemovie was Social networking was integral to the show’s distribution strategy, subsequently sold to the US. with viewers sharing their experiences and discussing the mystery online. The first series used Bebo as its social network, however the With the second series the creators discovered the first series’ following year they changed to Facebook. The same writers were success didn’t secure an easy run. Two sponsors dropped out and involved, taking the part of multiple characters and responding to they had difficulty securing replacements. people’s Facebook comments. Then, when series 2 went to air, the audience didn’t grow – most With regard to viewing figures, the results need to be considered weeks remaining the same as series 1, some weeks a little less. within the context of New Zealand being a country of four million This surprised the creators as they’d introduced a new interactive people. With its first series Reservoir Hill was competing against element called ‘Dreamspace’. The viewer could enter Beth’s dreams the TV on Demand channel which has popular shows like the New providing greater opportunity to interact with the characters and Zealand soap Shortland Street and series from the US and UK. At dip into the story than they had with the first series. Presented it’s peak, Reservoir Hill came in at number two. It’s important to as another feature on the website, it’s possible the audience was note that the other shows were on free-to-air, people could go to choosing to explore that space rather than text. Stubbs and Robins free-to-air or watch them on-demand, whereas Reservoir Hill was weren’t sure why numbers dropped. only on-demand. Also, the audience had no previous experience with the brand or the story or the characters. Robins believed they had “twenty five to thirty thousand people watching each episode - which made us number two or three, never lower than six.” They outdid Masterchef and other programs with huge followings. With regard to texts, Reservoir Hill would receive around two thousand texts each week over Monday and Tuesday.
At the end of the series Stubbs and Robins cut the webisodes together to create a telefeature, taking out the interactive scenes (eg where she was checking her phone for audience feedback) to make it more linear. TVNZ and New Zealand On Air were delighted as this was an unexpected bonus. The sponsors were particularly thrilled because it was screened on free-to-air.
222 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Reservoir Hill firelight 223 CONCLUSION A further challenge was raised by Stubbs regarding the barriers to broadcasters commissioning All Media projects, beyond site development and maintenance costs. Interactive webseries can yield surprising results creatively as well as critically. When Stubbs and Robins embarked on series 1 “There’s very small financial incentive. It was early on for they envisaged the story arc would move from point A to point B. that particular on-demand channel, but it’s perspective, However interactivity resulted in Beth ending up at point C. This they can make a lot more money selling thirty second result would be exciting for the creators and an audience with slots on free-to-air than they can on a web page.” a vested interest, however it begs the question of whether the success is transferable when on-sold to free-to air TV. The webseries and telemovie versions of Reservoir Hill by no means mark the end of the journey for producers Stubbs and Robins. Interactivity, especially with a tight turnaround, reduces the amount Screen Hub’s 18 October 2013 article reveals that SVT, Sweden’s of control creators have when structuring the series. This in turn largest broadcasting network is remaking Reservoir Hill as a TV would increase the risk for the broadcaster and investors. What series, and that Stubbs’ and Robins’ KHF Media has received early might yield a significant, immersed fan base during the interactive / development support from New Zealand Film Commission for a creative process, might fail in its dramatic impetus when the series feature film version. The mysteries of Reservoir Hill will continue to has to function on its dramatic merits alone. enthrall for a while yet.
Reservoir Hill series 1 was produced in New Zealand in 2009. ABC3 screened the series 1 and series 2 telemovies in Australia, in Sources: a 6.55pm Sunday timeslot on August 4 and 11, 2013. The ‘series’ enjoyed just three posts on the ABC3 Facebook page and received http://tvnz.co.nz/reservoir-hill/exclusive-interview-creators-3803291 22 likes and seven positive or interested comments on Sunday https://www.facebook.com/ABC3 August 4 after ‘series’ 1 went to air; 8 likes and no comments https://www.facebook.com/reservoirhill?fref=ts on August 8 before the launch of ‘series’ 2 and; 17 likes and two http://www.screenhub.com.au/news/shownewsarticle. comments indicating disinterest on August 11 the day ‘series’ php?newsID=49959 2 screened. Also, the posts referred to Reservoir Hill as a series rather than a telemovie. Whether this confused the audience isn’t known; neither is the amount of publicity the show received on ABC3 in the lead up to the screenings.
Another factor is the different durations of the two series. The television guide indicates that ‘series’ 1 ran for 65 minutes, whilst ‘series’ 2 ran for 90 minutes - which would make scheduling a little more difficult than average two part telemovies.
224 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Reservoir Hill firelight 225 BACKGROUND
In 2010, when Guy Gadney gave a MIP talk about The Project Factory’s (TPF) platform for creating transmedia experiences around narrative properties, he attracted the interest of Ian McClelland, Senior Vice President New Media of RTL Group, Europe’s leading entertainment network. Together they workshopped concepts and with McLelland’s blessing, Guy pitched to various productions within the RTL Group. RTL Netherlands and Endemol embraced the approach and invited TPF to work with them on existing serial Goede Tijden Slechte Tijden (GTST) – giving birth to the Wie is WIE IS TIM? Tim? (Who is Tim?) transmedia experience. A CASE STUDY WITH GUY GADNEY & JENNIFER WILSON
Written by Evelyn Saunders and Marcus Gillezeau https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fue5C-jBlL0 GTST is based on the 1980s Australian format of the serial The Restless Years. The Netherlands’ most watched soap, the series Key Tips – attracts approximately 10% of the population 5 nights a week. • The closer a transmedia company works with Wie is Tim? was launched during the summer break of 2012 and the production company and the broadcasting enjoyed “280,000 downloads, millions of game plays and a 25% company around a particular show, the rise in the TV audience on its return”. It also won 4 major awards. stronger the All Media construct will be. This success resulted in RTL Netherlands commissioning a second transmedia experience Spring Levend for the summer break in • With All Media there are tricks to the trade and a 2013 prior to the series entering its 25th season. The experience lot of complexities. Considerations include: the finished with over 540,000 downloads, the app having shot to way that you release or market the app; how you #1 at iTunes in the Netherlands in the first week. The number of build it; and how you maintain communities. downloads exceeded that of Wie is Tim? • Staggered Release: the methodology is about building intrigue; a staggered release of story lines and narrative twists and turns that naturally lead to speculation. CONCEPT • There’s a critical mass of audience on smart phones and tablets and social networks, that truly want to engage in your programme. Wie is Tim? was the first cross platform content project to be used • Broadcasters need to create a total experience for a mass audience. Designed to engage fans through summer around a show, not just TV content. between season 23 and 24 of Goede Tijden Slechte Tijden (GTST), it ran from the end of series cliff-hanger through to the new • There has to be a sustainable commercial series launch. model behind creating transmedia experiences around TV content. Released in July 2012, the free app had its own storyline and centred around Tim, a new character in the show. The app • TV is a fantastic medium for moving an contained “9 weeks of scripted content, video mobisodes, nine audience from one place to another. games, competitions, and hidden content, all forming part of a • The app itself is great marketing for a property hand-written notebook that viewers ‘unlocked’ week by week.” as it can have scheduled push notifications. (Gadney) • A team that’s on top of story and technology can turn unexpected situations into intrigue and marketing pluses.
228 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Wie is Tim? firelight 229 DEVELOPMENT FINANCING
Kirsty Hunter, Managing Director of TPF’s London office and Lauren The strong, commercial model that sat behind the experience was Fenner TPF producer, were invited into the GTST story room to key to the project’s initial success and it being given the green advise about what could be achieved on the platform and help light. Match-making between broadcasters, brands and sponsors marry it to the series narrative. According to Gadney, there was a was vital and Wie is Tim? was financed through Endemol and RTL break through moment when everyone realized the key construct Netherlands with the South Africa Tourist Board and Samsung as could be around the new character Tim, and his notebook - which sponsors. Players won weekly prizes for their interaction with the had been heavily featured in the lead-up to the cliff hanger of the experience and, the ultimate winner, won a role as an extra and a series. The head writers then developed a storyline that built on the trip to South Africa. question “Who is Tim?” and used this mystery, his notebook and other devices such as mini-games, map challenges and hidden Whilst Gadney was not able to discuss the budget, he did mention content as a basis for the app’s game-play. that it was cheaper than drama. “We have an advantage. With the help of Screen Australia we’ve created this format which allows us to go to market with a complex piece of technology that has proven itself under enormous strain from major mainstream audiences, at a budget level which is competitive because we aren’t re-inventing the wheel every time.”
230 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Wie is Tim? firelight 231 “When you are shifting a quantity of people into an PRE-PRODUCTION interactive environment and asking them to register, play games and interact, we have to be prepared. It’s a bit like a May Day Sale: when those doors open, you have to make In terms of pre-production the timeline was incredibly tight. Pre- sure you can cater to everybody simultaneously.” (Gadney) production was a small number of brain storming meetings that quickly merged into the production process.
The project was scoped out so that all of the video content would be contained within the app whilst the website supported the leader-boards, forums, previews and promotional videos. The fact POST-PRODUCTION that TPF had Appisodic, an existing platform, helped facilitate this although some adaptation was required to make sure the story line would ‘fit’ into the platform. Also, the back end had to be modified Post-production is also an ambiguous term. For Gadney the term to accommodate certain RTL Netherlands requirements. post-production resonates most with testing the app, making sure it’s scalable and ensuring there are no glitches. According to Gadney, “These are not easy apps to build because basically we are doing the one thing that audiences hate, we are “You can test as much as you want with closed groups holding back content.” of people, but when you’ve got about a quarter of a million people hammering it the whole time, people find new things. And it’s a unique environment: it’s not like putting out a DVD and you’ve got a locked off edit and that’s it. This is a live, highly interactive, incredibly responsive conversation we’re in. The platform that PRODUCTION we’ve got and the format we build plays to that. We keep an eye on everything - every anomaly we check GTST: Wie is Tim? was designed and overseen in London; into. Even now if one user out of a quarter of a million the video content was written, shot and post produced in The people reports a problem, we get to know about it Netherlands; and the build (or production) took place in Sydney. and we’ll look into it and make sure it’s not indicative The time difference between the three countries assisted with the of any issue. We’re very responsive.” (Gadney) tight turnaround of the project. The budget for the content was borne by the production company.
Scalability was a also major consideration.
232 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Wie is Tim? firelight 233 Roll-out is another important consideration, as is website This translated to one in six TV viewers downloading the app. There maintenance and keeping the app up to date. Wie is Tim? is an were more than 280,000 downloads and it achieved #1 position iOS and Android app. With Android, every brand is different so an in the iTunes store and #8 worldwide.” An RTL Netherlands press Android app has to meet the specification of each handset. release stated the experience had “65,000 active users”.
“It’s a real art to get it right and it changes every Prior to Wie is Tim? GTST the series averaged 1.5 million viewers 6 months. When a new handset comes out you every day during its on-air season. After Wie is Tim? was rolled out, have to cater to it. Decommissioned handsets, the new series premiered with 1.92m viewers, a rise of 25%. upgrades, it’s just part of what we do.” (Gadney) In 2012, the GTST Facebook page received over one million hits a week – nearly seven visits per fan. Between 2012 and 2013, the number of likes on the GTST Facebook page increased from 147,000 to 187,000, meaning 40,000 new people (a 27% increase) receive regular updates from the series that they are then free to MARKETING share or comment on - building the buzz.
RTL Netherlands, the broadcaster, marketed Wie is Tim? on-air, in the press, on the radio, and utilised novel approaches such as sky- writing. The number of downloads and active users show that TV is a fantastic medium for moving an audience between platforms. DISTRIBUTION
The app itself was an effective marketing tool: it drove audiences to the principal property, associated events and the destination Of the power of social media in general, Gadney reported “Last site for content releases via its scheduled push notification system. year, Nielsen put out research that a nine percent increase in social Wie is Tim? used both push notifications and social media to keep media “buzz volume” corresponds to a one percent increase word of mouth alive and drive traffic to the various GTST iterations. in ratings.” It appears that with richer All Media content, RTL Netherlands and The Project Factory did better. According to MIPBlog, “Tim had an online life on Facebook and Twitter, following fans back when they followed him. They could also track his movements across the Netherlands using the app.
“The market research we did showed that people were more engaged when they used the app than when they didn’t.” (Gadney)
234 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Wie is Tim? firelight 235 Sources: According to Gadney the special sauce is a complex set of ingredients that if done right, is a beautiful thing. Wie is Tim? and http://www.rtlgroup.com/www/htm/home_news Spring Levend have interactive narratives, scheduled content, aspx?ID=E3FB573725414E4EA049BBDA14D9A5AE games and videos within a state of the art app. However success isn’t just about technology, it’s also about integrating with a broadcaster http://blog.mipworld.com/2012/10/liveblog-why-fans-are-a-tv-companys- and its commercial and marketing arms, brand integration and most-precious-asset/ media buying agencies. Most of all, it’s about audience.
One of the tips Gadney has for producers wanting to create this iteration of All Media content is to contemplate audience reach: how your audience consumes content, where they find it and the kind of conversations they’re having. If your show has a Facebook page and your fans are actively engaged with this page, it shows they’re looking for a deeper experience than just the TV show. So if you cut short the conversation at the end of a series, you’re cutting short your creativity and their enjoyment. As a production company you’re also cutting short your potential to cultivate the audience as a new revenue source.
Should you decide to create All Media content for smartphones, ask yourself why you might want to create content for both iOS and Android and, ipso facto, why you might discount one or the other. To maximise audience reach you have to use both platforms, especially since Samsung smart phones are becoming increasingly popular with the Australian market. That said, there are more SUMMARY security issues with Android apps so it’s necessary to think about how this might affect your business. No one can guarantee your app isn’t going to be hacked, so it’s important to ask questions and Wie is Tim? was the first major commissioning of The Project have answers ready for whatever the audiences want to do. Factory’s Appisodic platform. It provided the opportunity for TPF to lay the foundations for a strong storytelling infrastructure capable of spanning a variety of genres. The fact that it’s successfully been employed by the same series over two seasons, implies the format works as a story delivery technique in its own right.
236 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Wie is Tim? firelight 237 BACKGROUND
In 2009, German public broadcaster Südwestrundfunk (SWF) was looking for a way to celebrate the 25th anniversary of their film graduate timeslot Debut on Channel 3. They wanted to create something that explored the future of storytelling and how audiences rarely experienced media on just one platform. SWF (Commissioning) Editor Sebastian Hunerfeld called for pitches themed Future-proof Storytelling that had a story universe with a six part TV series at its centre and stand-alone elements in ALPHA 0.7 other media. Alpha 0.7, pitched by producer Dominik Frankowski, and writers Sebastian Büttner and Oliver Hohengarten of Zeitsprung Pictures A CASE STUDY WITH SEBASTIAN HUNERFELD GmbH, was a perfect fit. Its theme was current, controversial and promised to not only capture the imaginations of an audience but Interview by Amanda Keeling provide a storyworld they could contribute to.
See: www.alpha07.de/en/home/ for all Alpha 0.7 content Developed as a transmedia property from the outset, Alpha 0.7 was an ambitious project given it was the first of its kind in Germany. Key Tips – Hunerfeld had done a lot of research into international transmedia properties but geo-blocking and lack of information regarding • Your core creative team (the people responsible experience launch dates had frustrated his attempts to find trail for writing and developing the content) need to be heads in a timely manner. As a result he’d had to enter experiences across the project from the beginning; you can’t mid-story which had not only inhibited full exploration across all introduce a person into the mix part way through. platforms, but also prevented him from entering the experience • Fewer directors rather than more will result in a organically as a ‘native’ audience member. more unified vision and efficient production. Hunerfeld believed an immersed audience would be keen to see • Budget adequately to complete all components and hear everything about a storyworld so they could play within it – particularly your website. Having to cut back and become part of it. Zeitsprung’s idea was to play out across a on delivery of one component will impact television series, the internet, a six-part radio play, short podcasts, negatively on the experience as a whole. fictional coverage, comedy, a radio science show and live concerts featuring a bespoke band from 2017 named crash:conspiracy. • Pay attention to your audience demographics and advertise accordingly. “I think the good thing is that transmedia multiplatform stories can reach people where they are. You can build a universe and make your world approachable (so that) everyone can be part of the story. You get feedback (from) the user and you can react,” (Hunerfeld)
CONCEPT
Alpha 0.7 describes a transparent society where fear of terror attacks has led to personal freedom being eroded away in the name of homeland security. It asks the question: “What if all that data we share so readily, ends up in the wrong hands? What if it is used against us?”
240 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Alpha 7.0 firelight 241 DEVELOPMENT FINANCING
Hunerfeld and the Zeitsprung team began work on the storyworld Contemplating the challenges of finding finance for transmedia bible in October 2009. This was completed in January 2010 and properties, Hunerfeld said that in Germany projects are typically content was allocated across the platforms. The TV series was funded through TV broadcasters who don’t see a reason to to go into preproduction in April, so scripting of the series was experiment with earning an audience. “They’re interested, but first priority. there’s not a need… They’re still learning as well.”
Asked whether, on reflection he’d do anything differently, Alpha 0.7 was a co-production between the broadcaster SWR, MFG Film Funding, and extra funding from NRW GmbH, a public “The TV part of the whole project was too big and time company tasked with the cultural and economic promotion of consuming. I would try to have more time for every the film and media industry in North Rhine-Westfalen. The whole other medium to get their part of the story, and more budget was one package for SWR, the broadcaster. possibilities to have an exchange with the user. People really liked to be part of 2017 Germany. They liked to Hunerfeld recollects there was some difficulty pulling in all the play and we couldn’t make enough games.” (Hunerfeld) funds but the budget breakdown was roughly €400,000 from MFG, €200,000 from NRW and €1.1M from SWR - with approximately €1.6M coming through for the whole project. Zeitsprung was responsible for producing the TV series. The radio series was funded separately by the radio arm of SWF; the radio commissioning editor helped develop the story with the writers then brought in a radio drama director.
242 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Alpha 7.0 firelight 243 PRE-PRODUCTION Budget-wise, Hunerfeld was of the opinion that had they not run low on funds before developing the internet component, a web- focused line producer would’ve made things smoother. Also, as a The writers had a script delivery date of April for the TV series, after public broadcaster, SWF was not permitted to make video content which they scripted the radio drama play (effectively the second just for the internet. This meant the Alpha 0.7 site had a unique URL season of the series) prior to developing materials for the internet. (http://www.alpha07.de/en/), accessible via the SWF website, but An attempt to bring in a third writer was unsuccessful as she wasn’t with an about page detailing it was a fictional property sponsored across the story universe and time was ticking schedule-wise. by SWF. The website was created in Wordpress and Typo3.
“This was tough… The story was hard. We With regard to the radio component, some short one-minute had the base in the bible already but we had podcasts were created to promote the experience between to write everything else.” (Hunerfeld) broadcasts. Branded science background features were also created to integrate the experience. Hunerfeld believes that having the two “masterminds as writers” across the whole experience – developing the concept and writing the content - was crucial given the tight schedule.
MARKETING
Whilst a marketing agency was keen to come aboard from PRODUCTION development, budget limitations meant their strategies couldn’t be employed. Instead, SWR’s marketing department created The production process involved a number of different directors a campaign along the same lines they’d use to promote a across the platforms. The director of the TV-series wasn’t the regular TV series. director of the transmedia elements. The director of the internet series was from a film school; and the two art directors made a In line with the team’s vision for the experience to start on the number of the Alpha 0.7 transmedia short films. Hunerfeld believes internet and then move between the internet and TV series, the this situation was less than ideal as a lot of specialists were web component of Alpha 0.7 went live in September 2010. Visitors responsible for only some of the parts. It created more work for were able to search a mysterious, cryptic page with icons and links the core team of four as they had to reiterate the final vision time to other pages and videos about a fictitious company. and again. Other members of the production team included a loose network of graphic designers, block writers and web developers.
244 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Alpha 7.0 firelight 245 The newspapers became excited and reported how the project was to get radio numbers. Furthermore, the strategy they employed for new and fresh, which had the added benefit of instilling confidence gaining internet page impressions was in keeping with the story across SWF’s various platforms for doing something innovative. It world’s theme of data security: they didn’t feel comfortable telling was also good publicity. the audience to beware surveillance whilst using Google Analytics to monitor their internet activities. According to Hunerfeld, broadcast numbers were quite good for the TV series, but dropped off towards the end. He agreed that qualifying the success of the project was difficult.
DISTRIBUTION
Two weeks prior to the launch of the TV series, the team launched a short alternate reality game (ARG) on the web gateway page. SUMMARY They’d created bespoke band crash:conspiracy and some live events that were also delivered via radio so as to utilize all three Alpha 0.7 is an interesting case study as it demonstrates how media. This further served to set things up for the second season innovation in and of itself won’t guarantee and/or sustain an of the series which was to be experienced via the radio drama. audience if the concept doesn’t match the interests of the broadcaster’s demographic. Whilst the success of Alpha 0.7 can’t The team followed their plan of having all components accessible be quantified, we can extrapolate from the experience and say via the web page once they’d been released on their native that in environments where broadcasters don’t have to earn an platform. Even though this had been promoted at the end of the TV audience yet are interested in exploring new frontiers through multi- and radio series, Hunerfeld said traffic across the different media platform storytelling, content creators and commissioning editors via the website wasn’t huge. need to identify what their audience wants when it comes to genre and story, and develop All Media content in line with that demand. Reflecting on the success of the experience in terms of numbers across all demographics, Hunerfeld feels that Alpha 0.7 didn’t It’s not enough to develop a multi-platform project on the grounds reach the youth audience it would’ve most appealed to. The SWR that its genre has a successful track record in the field. The project demographic is not a youth audience and no-one was expecting might be a critical success but if it fails to meet the key performance SWR to commission something like Alpha 0.7. Not having the funds indicators of the broadcaster in terms of eyeballs, the chances of to engage a marketing agency meant they were at a disadvantage. future All Media projects being commissioned are reduced; and nobody benefits. Hunerfeld isn’t sure how many people the project reached across the board – they ran focus groups to find out how people moved across media, but as far as accurate measurements, it isn’t possible
246 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Alpha 7.0 firelight 247 BACKGROUND
Jeff Gomez is CEO of Starlight Runner Entertainment, an entertainment studio that specializes in creating and producing transmedia franchises. Starlight also advises companies on story world expansion to maximize return through iterations that can be marketed across a variety of platforms. Jeff has worked on: Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean, Prince of Persia and Tron, Microsoft’s Halo, James Cameron’s Avatar, Hasbro’s Transformers, Mattel’s Hot Wheels and Coca-Cola’s Happiness Factory.
Whilst non-disclosure agreements prohibit Jeff from going into the specifics of developing certain properties, he is able to offer a guide to Starlight’s approach to creating transmedia bibles. This JEFF GOMEZ case study is an amalgam of an interview with Jeff Gomez in 2012; the transcript from Gomez’s StoryWorld 2012 Keynote Address; A CASE STUDY ON PRODUCING TRANSMEDIA BIBLES and a published interview with Caitlin Burns, Transmedia Producer, Starlight Entertainment.
Written by Marcus Gillezeau and Evelyn Saunders
See: http://www.starlightrunner.com/about CONCEPT
When consulting, Starlight’s job is to provide documentation based on the principal property’s story world so that various marketing departments can leverage authorised canonical content into the property’s marketing and licensing programs. Caitlin Burns describes her role as Transmedia Producer as:
“Making sure that the story you see in the theatre, on your game console, on TV, in a book, or a comic are each different from one another, and that they all fit together so they make sense and add something to the story world.” (Burns) Key Tips – Key Tips – Caitlin Burns, Transmedia Gomez’s StoryWorld 2012 Conference keynote speech Producer, Starlight Entertainment breaks down an approach he said is doable by everyone. 1. Story is key. “10 Commandments of 21st Century Franchise 2. Film to Video Game or Video Game to Film Production” by Jeff Gomez transition has very different production 1. Know the essence of your brand processes. It’s rare to find truly experienced and never stray from it people in both methods of production. 2. The story world is unstoppable and rules over all 3. Projects that appear the same on the surface 3. Franchise visionaries must put up tent poles are always very different when you break them now, even if they have to move them later down to core themes and internal cosmologies. 4. Studio and producers must secure the best 4. One type of story cannot sit possible talent for the job, but talent must comfortably on every media. never roadblock ongoing story world 5. Create highly organized resources 5. 3D adds a layer of complexity. This complexity will for canon and assets be different within each of the media it’s being used. 6. Studios and Producers must establish a franchise clearinghouse and regular cross-divisional Source: “Meant To Be Seen” Interview with Caitlin Burns meetings in support of the story world Written by Neil Schneider, Sunday, 25 March 2012 7. Stakeholders must be incentivized to support the strategy behind the rollout of the story world http://www.mtbs3d.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=a rticle&id=12966%3Ainterview-with-starlight-runner-entertainment 8. Franchise visionaries and story world implementation &catid=37%3Ainterviews&Itemid=75 must validate and celebrate audience participation 9. Licensing, Merchandising and Marketing must nurture and expand the story world Oposite Page: Text taken from Jeff Gomez keynote speech to Storyworld 10. Story world must be accessible across an 2012 Conference. For the full article please visit http://www.businessinsider. array of digital and traditional media portals, com.au/10-commandments-of-21st-century-franchise-production-2012-10 each piece adding to the narrative whole Source: Business Insider Australia, 20 October 2012.
250 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Jeff Gomez firelight 251 Films tell the protagonist’s story and every scene plays out to They then sit down and look at a potential transmedia super progress the protagonists journey. However films exist within a structure identifying intellectual property and how the story can story world, which has a past, present and a future. Multiplatform potentially play out as, for example, one or a series of video games properties explore that world and allow the audience or player to that are not replicative of the movie but help to nurture and grow do the same. the story world and, give the player something new and exciting to discover about the story world. “There is a richness to the narrative that understands that when someone is out of the audience’s field of “We are working at the concept level, creating vision, they have stories of their own.” (Burns) the documentation that then can be extrapolated upon by a ‘Cameron’ or a marketing division, or the production itself.” (Gomez)
DEVELOPMENT PRE-PRODUCTION “Whenever we’re bought into a situation the first order of business is to connect with the producer and possibly the director, whoever was involved in generating the story Starlight’s intention is to expand upon the experience the audience content in the first place. It’s a matter of absorbing all of has or will have when watching the primary property. According the information at hand. This would include the screenplay to Gomez, if you’re going to do a proper inventory for transmedia but it also would include any materials that were fabricated development, it’s important to have as complete access to the set in pre-production, that were descriptive of the story world. as humanly possible. Photographs are really important because Everything from the props all the way down to production they provide meaning, character, illustration and context. notes about things like make-up and hairstyles.” (Gomez) “I’d like to think that in any project that we’re involved Once Starlight has absorbed all of the existing information about with where we’re asking questions of the filmmakers as a the property and been briefed on the marketing history, they movie is in production - that sometimes we are pursuing assess the underlying meaning of the narrative so they can dig inquiries they might give further consideration to and that deep into what the film is trying to say – its mythic underpinnings can impact the screenplay in some small way so as to and message. bolster the potential for transmedia. So that perhaps a reference is made to some back story that will be covered in some future novel. Because those are the things that fans love to discover, these little ‘Easter Eggs’.” (Gomez)
252 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Jeff Gomez firelight 253 PRODUCTION MARKETING
“For any franchise mythology or universe bible we include Large studios plan their marketing extensions and licensing a log line and summary of the entire property as it stands programs and multi-platform implementations in the years leading on a platform neutral basis, a description of the story up to the release of the film. Gomez is of the belief that “in the world, all of the main characters, locations, creatures, future if you’re investing hundreds of millions of dollars in anything magical or science fiction aspects of the world.” (Gomez) that is entertainment related, a percentage will need to be allocated in the development process - not the marketing process.” This Starlight bibles also include a chapter about the essence of the approach will ensure that the potential of the brand is maximized brand, how to understand what it’s really about and its mythic across different media platforms in different ways. Once these underpinnings; as well a chronology of all the events that are iterations have been determined and developed, there should also official within the context of the story world. This information helps be a marketing budget for implementation of those plans as they everyone to have a sense of what happened when, for the property. move into production.
“From there, we look at how these stories are being told: When it comes to marketing transmedia content, Gomez postulated film, games, 3-D, 2-D, and where they’re going (film “if I am marketing some aspect of a major entertainment release, + games, novel + comics, etc…) - and figure out how wouldn’t it be cool to be able to utilise a piece of canonical content these stories branch from one another, how they all fit to help me market that release?” together, and how they can allow for the best storytelling, and most engaging experiences possible.” (Burns) He used True Blood as an example where HBO advertised products that would be useful to vampires (bottles of True Blood), as a part Burns goes on to explain that these robust resource guides facilitate of their marketing campaign. “It felt like the universe of True Blood ‘writers understanding (of) what’s at the storyworld’s core, so that was being extended and made real in some way.” This ability to they can create stories within that framework.’ immerse the audience in the storyworld then extends itself across distribution models, for example marketers had the ability to move To not approach the development of multiplatform story properties beyond posters and taglines for their marketing, to engage in star in this way would create elements that jar against the storyworld and story power. “Some people didn’t know what was going on but and confuse the audience. Whether the audience is aware of it or it was intriguing and laid down the breadcrumbs that led people all not, they treat entertainment properties as they would a brand – they the way back to the show. That’s cool and something that would have expectations. As a producer of multiplatform iterations, as a be perceived of as an asset to marketers.” distributor and as an exhibitor, to not meet audience expectations discredits the brand and ruins the potential for maximizating revenue return.
254 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Jeff Gomez firelight 255 “I feel, with great story – there is just enough detail “We were fortunate with 20th Century Fox on Avatar there to make you believe, at least for a little while, because we were given absolutely full access to those and you immerse yourself in it and are washed in it, materials and that sped the process along for us.” (Gomez) and when it’s done you miss it a little bit.” (Gomez) “I don’t know that I’d say that we had an enormous impact on the film itself, I don’t think so, (Cameron) had matters well in hand.” (Gomez)
CONCLUSION Gomez was particularly enchanted by the Navi, “The Navi were very, very precious to us and a very important component to the project that we were doing. We devoted a special volume to the One of the things that stands out when looking at truly successful Navi, and Navi culture in our work, and hopefully that proved All Media campaigns is that pretty much everything works as helpful to the production. There was also someone working on the advertising and advertising can’t be seen to be a dirty word. project who had devised the Navi language and we were very, very interested. It was reminiscent to us of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Every prop, effect, element of the filmmaking process that went or the Klingon language in Star Trek. We would’ve loved for the into the creation of a property is story. To meet the public’s demand language to proliferate and we did a lot to try to promote within Fox to deliver this story makes good business sense. the notion of extending that language out to the fans, either before or during the implementation of Avatar. It’s something that didn’t If the story is worth telling, it’s worth telling the ‘whole’ story. quite make it, but that we’re sure is going to (be) in future iterations of the property.”
Regarding the potential for multiplatform iterations, it’s interesting to look at what audiences created for themselves as fan fiction. SOME INSIGHT INTO AVATAR “The ‘Avatar Depression’ that was so noted in the wake of the release of the film… the fans went off, at least the Jeff’s work on Avatar began when he was called in by the 20th real hardcore fans, and built (experiences) themselves. On Century Fox Studios’ Director of Marketing as physical production YouTube everything from makeup tips, all the way through was getting under way. The job was to provide documentation to people who were launching protests, for whatever based on the story world of Avatar, so that Fox Marketing could purpose, anywhere in the world, who painted their skin leverage authorised canonical content into its marketing and blue to affiliate themselves with the plight of a race whose licensing program. Whilst Jeff’s NDA prohibited him from providing land was being usurped by some greater and far more too much detail, his enthusiasm for the project was palpable.
256 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Jeff Gomez firelight 257 powerful entity. It’s all there and more: live action role players who painted themselves blue and ran off into the forest and recorded their daily Navi rituals.” (Gomez)
Gomez isn’t surprised, “you can’t help but smile at the spectacular technological innovation. Jim did absolutely amazing things and I can best illustrate that (with) a very, very brief shot where Neytiri turned and the sunlight struck the back tips of her ears and you could actually see the veins and the translucents of the flesh in her ears. That level of detail – he was generating a sense of verisimilitude, convincing us that this world was real. That, to me, was the hallmark of not just a great storyteller (but) someone who Jeff Gomez, CEO of Starlight Runner Entertainment believes in his world and therefore gives me permission to believe in the world.”
“When something works that gracefully to have you believe in it, you believe, many people believe. There’s a relationship between that and some of the world’s most persistent religions. There’s information coming at you from so many different angles through the engine of this ‘organised religion’. The ethos and stories are being communicated to you with such passion that you become convinced of its veracity. You embrace it and take from it the sapor, the nurturing that you yearn for and that is why the religion persists.” (Gomez)
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“Highrise the towers in the world, the worlds in the towers.”
Highrise is a story universe that explores vertical living in suburbs around the world. Produced across a number of years, this project is still being rolled out in instalments - a collaborative documentary experience that is an experiment with form and content: to not just make documentary films about people, but with people. Katerina Cizek works in-house at the National Film Board of Canada to research and direct the project produced by Gerry Flahive. The HIGHRISE various properties include mixed media, interactive documentaries, mobile productions, live presentations, installations and films. A CASE STUDY WITH KATERINA CIZEK
Interviewed by Amanda Keeling, Researched and written by Evelyn Saunders Key Tips – http://highrise.nfb.ca/ • When working collaboratively and remotely be sure your brief is explicit about legal issues, what is expected and when.
• Collaboration using digital media and digital communications can create a shift in the filmmaker’s perspective. The audience become users and subjects become participators, collaborators and colleagues. To date, the instalments include: DEVELOPMENT
• Prologue, an interactive documentary, tells stories of Toronto alongside an overview of the vision, Working in-house has meant Cizek is able to conduct significant thoughts and philosophies of urban study. research before deciding what media a project is going to be. Highrise came out of her interest in Toronto and eight months • The Thousandth Tower explores how highrise research. “Ultimately the story or investigation is at the heart of living influences the lives 6 Toronto residents. what the project’s all about and then the media or medium is • Out My Window expands the concept to a global level. chosen to best tell that story.” Collaboration occurred across multiple platforms to create a virtual highrise using a 360˚ game-like interface. Cizek doesn’t consider Highrise a transmedia production as they didn’t conceive all of the components right from the beginning. • Installation took the Out My Window experience offline That said, it is multiplatform as all of the properties exist within the and brought it into the real world at the International same storyworld. They extend from the same concept. Documentary Festival of Amsterdam (IDFA). With regard to Out My Window “One day I just had a really simple • Participate adds a new functionality to Out My idea: imagine if we had all these apartments in these different Window by allowing the audience to share their places around the world, all in just one building… one building views by adding their own photos and texts. that was accessible online. It kind of flowed from there. And the • One Millionth Tower uses animation to bring to life concept was so simple, the idea so simple. It really translated well the vision of six Toronto highrise residents as they into a web-documentary.” imagine what their neighbourhoods could look like.
The project continues today, exploring and expanding upon the “hyper-glocal” (global and local) universality of the storyworld: the highrise experience - what happens inside the building as well as outside, and how similar peoples’ experiences are regardless of where they live in the world.
Highrise is a long term look at humanity as an urban species.
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Whilst Cizek isn’t across the financial aspects of the project, she did For Out My Window, Cizek worked with over a hundred people say that is one hundred percent funded by the National Film Board around the world in thirteen cities (reduced from twenty five). There of Canada (English programming). The production budget was was a different kind of team in every city often composed of either a handled by Producer Gerry Flahive and various NFB departments. journalist and/or a photographer or sometimes a housing advocate or sometimes a high-rise resident doing self documenting.
The creative and technical brief was used as a starting point for the conversations with everybody, so they knew what to look for as they gathered the materials and story. PRE-PRODUCTION Contributions to the main Out My Window site were made by photographers on contract: materials were either supplied with Out my Window had an innovative approach towards collaboration non-exclusive rights to their photography forever; or they were and being realized as an online documentary. Cizek and her team commissioned and the images became the National Film Board provided a creative and technical brief to contributors so she could of Canada’s. direct the documentary via email, phone, Facebook and Skype. It was a project made for the internet: for the web, by the web. A Contributions to the Participate site were made as a user / practical decision according to Cizek as there would be no way contributor to the ‘NFB Participate Group’ on Flickr, giving the they could have, with the timeline and budget or even conceptually, NFB permission to use the images. These photographs were then filmed in each location conventionally. Because they were working moderated and the API taken from Flickr and put into the site’s virtually, the brief had to be very explicit about legal issues, what Flash to showcase them. was expected and when.
As for the Out My Window shoots Cizek was physically present for, The brief included some visual cues on how to shoot the collages she discovered that the Yellow Bird camera (same as Google Street that became the three hundred and sixty degree environments View camera) required her to hide under the tripod to avoid being and, how to look for a story. Every story is triggered by an object in shot. They adapted the camera to capture twenty-four frames a seen either in the interior environment or the exterior one. The brief second and created a player for streaming the playback. Rendering explained how to develop that idea as well as a list of specific the images took three days and playback showed one frame every questions for the audio interview, technical concerns such as three seconds, so it was difficult to get a true representation of format, the minimum requirements for the photography, how to what was going on. send the photography, and consent forms.
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Cizek uses technology companies from all over the world. Yellow Cizek’s Installation premiered at the International Documentary Film Bird, the 360˚ video team, are based in Holland; a team in Kitchener Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) and served to bring Out My Window did the architecture and site design; art design and animation was into the physical environment. Although a project in its own right, done in Toronto by Helios. Many other elements were performed Installation would’ve served to drive traffic to the ‘replayable’ in-house by the NFB in cities across Canada. online experience.
With One Millionth Tower, photographs were blown up, traced and Installation was created by interactive artist Priam Givord and the then the residents and architects sat down together and sketched CFC Media Lab in partnership with Cizek and the NFB. It was a out ideas for the spaces. Animators took the sketches and brought “spatialised cinematic experience” on an eight metre wide collage them to cinematic life, then the web developer, Michael Robbins of screens and utilised motion trigger interactivity. To achieve the from Helios, brought what was a 2D documentary back into a 3D final result, the assets were taken out of Flash and put into Toronto virtual world. company Derivative’s TOUCHDesigner software.
“It was a story about 3D space so he wanted to put it back in virtual 3D space.” (Cizek)
The documentary was built using new open source technologies: HTML5, webGL and Mozilla’s Popcorn.
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DISTRIBUTION CONCLUSION
In terms of how people consume Highrise, the website is built in Technology allows people all around the world to find themselves WordPress and accessible by all devices that carry Flash. Some of in the loungerooms of total strangers, discover similar points of the iterations have mobile sites. view and collaborate. As documentary filmmaker Cizek says,
Out My Window the website was licensed to SBS. http://www.sbs. “We’re all using this stuff, our audiences and us, com.au/outmywindow/ everybody’s using it. I call them the people formerly known as the audience – they’re users now. I call ‘subjects’, At the time of interview (2010), Cizek mentioned the National Film you know, ‘people formerly known as subjects’, they’re Board of Canada was interested in exploring how the format could participants and collaborators and colleagues. I think we’re be sold. all learning from each other in new exciting ways, and that’s what the new technology and not so new technology is allowing us: the transformation of those relationships.”
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Henry Jenkins is Provost’s Professor of Communication, HENRY JENKINS Journalism, Cinematic Arts, and Education at USC. He is famously referred to as the “father of transmedia storytelling” following his use of the term in the 2003 publication of the same name. INTERVIEW Transmedia Storytelling “Moving characters from books to films to Written by Marcus Gillezeau and Evelyn Saunders video games can make them stronger and more compelling” (by Henry Jenkins on January 15, 2003) http://henryjenkins.org/aboutmehtml “Several years ago, I asked a leading producer of animated features how much creative control his team exerted over the games, toys, comics, and other products that deployed their characters. I was reassured that the distribution company handled all such ancillary materials. I saw the movement of content across media as an enhancement of the creative process. He saw it as a distraction or corruption.” (Jenkins)
Source: MIT Technology Review, http://www.technologyreview.com/ news/401760/transmedia-storytelling/) CONCEPT Key Tips –
• Goals of transmedia include: extending The future of Transmedia Storytelling engagement; herding consumers who have been left behind; establishing multiple touch points with “Let’s assume the current moment of transmedia is one of growing brands; promoting an existing media property. pains. All signs suggest that transmedia is going to be the reality of the world that we’re working in, that more executives will get it, that • Tested genres: sci-fi / fantasy media more audiences will understand it and expect it, and more creators / horror; and childrens. will begin to see the creative opportunities it represents. I think as • Opportunities for development: that happens we’re going to see it spread to all genres and I think historical fiction and documentary. we’ll see some pretty rich examples of quality dramas, sitcoms and whatnot. Much richer than it is now, (it will have) moved from • Audiences expect transmedia being a novelty to a fundamental aspect of the way certain stories storytelling with certain properties. are constructed. The audiences are demanding it in at least as high • As people watch TV and film more socially, a quality they’re demanding other kinds of entertainment they’re they demand greater complexity. watching; and it’s not something that’s done by the big boys but is something that operates at every level that media operates.” • Twitter is a pretty good prediction tool (Jenkins) for where audiences are going to go. When considering whether Jenkins’ statements describe the future, where we’re at the moment is best explained by his assessment of the specific genres and forms of story that have gained traction.
We spoke to Henry Jenkins in 2010 about making practical Tested Genres decisions when it comes to investing in multi-platform projects.
“The two zones where transmedia seems to have most effectively Please note, Jenkins’ comments have been interspersed with our rooted is children’s media and science fiction / fantasy media / own to give this interview context within the structure of the Hands horror, at least in the American context. These genres support On series of case studies the tenet that transmedia is based on world building, strategies of engagement and, strategies of reaching out to audiences. Especially the 18-27 year old males that television is losing -
272 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Henry Jenkins firelight 273 and trying to reach them through the digital platforms. They are “And what are the goals of transmedia? It’s centrally about genres that have strong existing fan infrastructures that are easy to extending engagement. It’s centrally about herding consumers support”. (Jenkins) that are left behind. And it’s about establishing multiple touch points with brands. I would say they are the three central goals, the “I think films have embraced the idea of promotion but primarily fourth maybe being the promotion of the existing media property.” in advance of the release. Transmedia becomes a strategy that (Jenkins) filmmakers are using to build up awareness. With television it seems to go mostly to build awareness and to stitch together the seasons and fill in the empty spaces when the show is off Underdeveloped Opportunities the air and, then, to build up ancillary markets around a particular program.” (Jenkins) “If you ask me where the creative opportunities are I think they extend across all genres. But I think the two most underdeveloped This interview was conducted with Jenkins as a matter of course. areas that are so rich for transmedia is historical fiction and What became affirming whilst interviewing other creatives, was that documentary - for different reasons.” their experiences generally reflected his observations. “Historical fiction research is a vast world that’s up there on the screen and people are really into that world and want to know more about what’s going on. I would kill for transmedia around Gangs of New York for example, which really spoke to me and seemed like such a densely realized world. I love Rome, the HBO show and DEVELOPMENT would have loved transmedia there.”
“With documentaries you shoot so much footage that doesn’t The Goals of Transmedia end up in the finished film. That costs money for a fictional film - you’re making stuff that wouldn’t have been made otherwise. But a documentary is about re-utilizing and spreading out content that “The film industry struggles with “what’s the payoff ” when doing you would have otherwise thrown away, and it’s about recovering a one shot movie. I think that’s why certain genres are much more some of your costs, not extending your costs. So for me those likely to embrace transmedia. You more or less know if you’re two genres are no brainers in terms of extending the creative making a superhero saga or a science fiction film, or a fantasy opportunities around transmedia.” sorcery epic or a horror film that you’re hoping it does well enough that you can build sequels. So you start to look at a structure that will hold together over time, and transmedia becomes very attractive at that point.”
274 firelight Hands On - All Media Producing Henry Jenkins firelight 275 Original Works fan culture. Is it a show that is really trying to do innovative work within the genre - or is it simply trying to exploit fan interests for The development of a multi-platform property in many instances, is something that’s going to be cheap and stupid? So I think there is the development of a storyworld and original IP, all of which have now a question of reassuring the audience as much as there is of budgetary considerations. As an academic Jenkins did not feel attracting audiences through transmedia once we’re into the genre qualified to express firm opinions about budget allocation, however fan world.” he did offer informed thoughts. If the development of a multi-platform property is the development “We again have to decide what kind of property we’re talking about of IP, finding a business model that suits that property is also part and what’s the model they have of what they want the transmedia of the development phase. to do for them. If the model simply is to draw people into watching the primary show then the amount of money put into it should be Business Model consistent with the kinds of money you would put into promotion otherwise. If you’re seeing it as a way of extending experience and “I think the challenge of figuring out what the business model looks reaching a broader base of viewers and keeping them —and you like, is being felt more and more. There have been some great blog think there is revenue to be made off of it, then it becomes a totally posts in the last year or so of people really trying to drill down and different proposition. But the challenge is if you’re talking about say how do we figure out what the revenue model is to support something that is not pre-sold. The odds are it’s going to fail not some of this. Early on, here in this country (US), I think transmedia because transmedia fails, but because more shows that are not came out of the PR and branding budget for media properties and pre-sold fail and indeed many shows that are pre-sold fail. “ so the success was determined by “did it increase buying into the mother ship?” “Did it increase sales of the thing they were going to Investment, ROI and Audience Expectation make money off of?”“
“If you’re pitching and saying not only do I need a budget for TV “You don’t necessarily expect the website to make you money. show, but I need a budget for this and this, you up the risk factor (But) I think as people discover there actually is money to be for the network - unless you can demonstrate that stuff is going to made off of some transmedia extension content their expectations actually yield payoff. “ shoot up really fast. And suddenly the sense of these being all additional revenue streams becomes really strong for a lot of “With certain kinds of properties there is now a transmedia people. But there’s not yet a fully developed model for how to expectation on the part of the audience. They’re going to look develop a business plan for some of these transmedia extensions. at the show a certain way if it does have transmedia, and a very How do you? —I think most of our business models are medium different way if it doesn’t. It’s an early marker for a lot of fans of specific still.” how intelligent the show is, how rooted it is in the genre and the
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Online Platforms as Financiers Social Networks and Consumption
With regard to the question of whether online platforms that require “More and more research is showing Twitter is a fairly good predictor content will partner with creators ... of where the audience is going to go in a relatively quick order. The shows people are talking about on Twitter turn out to be shows that “I’ve been predicting it as being a media for some time and they keep have big booms and audience attention much of the time. This is in making announcements that suggest that’s what they’re starting to part because the people on Twitter are the people who are going to do and there certainly are some signs of some real success stories the movies. They are the trend-setters but it’s also because once it’s there but I’m not sure I know why we’re not seeing more of it yet. on Twitter it reaches a much broader range of people. So if we see It’s a question I’m asking more and more loudly because it looks transmedia content as sharable content or spreadable media they like we’ve been on the threshold of that being a model for at least can talk about, they can discuss, they can add the pieces together four or five years now so I don’t know the answer to that to be and try to figure out what the puzzle looks like - those kinds of honest with you. I keep reading the tea-leaves and thinking well behaviours build into social networks and are a means of getting that looks like it just clicked in and that was successful so why buzz, awareness, engagement, maintaining engagement, fostering don’t they make that next step but we’re not quite there yet.” interest, and so forth. So I think of transmedia as part of a larger picture of online behaviour. That a certain set of audiences expect But whilst Twitter, Facebook etc, aren’t partnering with content the transmedia to be there. And they’re not going to be engaged creators, they are excellent facilitators for transmitting content in unless there are things for them to do around the television content. new and interesting ways. They’re also pretty useful when it comes This is a concept I talk about in “Convergence Culture”, I talk about to measuring success. textual attractors and textual activators, and the attractors draws the audience in and the activators gives them something to do, and right now transmedia serves both of those functions often.”
To date producers, broadcasters and distributors have used social network infrastructure to market their content, share it and in many instances, add to it. But we still haven’t nailed the whole of it. We haven’t quite capitalized on the potential of these media to assist in the creation of content and keep it being sustained.
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DISTRIBUTION Successful online content without film or television iterations
Interactivity and User Generated Content (UGC) “I would say that The Guild is a great example because it’s moved from 4 or 5 seasons online to having its own comic book series and doing a variety of other things. That’s a transmedia success that “You can play around with interactions between viewers and hasn’t passed through television and hasn’t passed through film. producers and user generated content but I haven’t seen a lot that It’s built it’s following gradually through online distribution. I think television has done in this space that’s particularly interesting. I we’re going to see more and more of those. Dr. Horrible’s (Sing- think there are other spaces where that’s a significant factor but I Along Blog) has done some of that same thing. It’s been basically haven’t seen the mainstream media yet, really use that in a way that 3 instalments of something that’s fairly self-contained whereas The either audiences really enjoyed, or that extended and enriched the Guild was ongoing, but I think it similarly was transmedia’s top storytelling experience. But I do think that recognizing an audience social-network-developed fan following that is fairly strong without is not just one or two people watching in their living room but a ever crossing either the film screen or multiplex or the television group of people who regularly interface online, and fuelling that, is network. I think we’ll see more of that.” a fundamental shift we have to make as television and film enters into a social media era.” “One of things we’re discovering is that as people watch television socially or films socially they demand greater complexity. And I Social Networks and Consumption think that’s where we’ve seen the greatest impact so far: that move towards serialization or long-term story arcs, that move towards “Consumption is more and more networked. It’s tied to the social a more complex set of characters, that move towards a stronger networks people are part of. They exchange bits of media with each focus on character back story - all can be tied to the social other, media references and media content pops up on Facebook phenomena of collective viewing.“ and Twitter quite often.”
Some stories even use Twitter as one of its main platforms – The Lizzie Bennett Diaries for example – but that was produced in 2012. In 2010, The Guild was cutting edge – and still is if their July 2013 incorporation into The Dawn of the Dragons MRPG is anything to go by.
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Jenkins’ 2003 observation regarding ancillary materials and the generation of the term transmedia, was revolutionary for filmmakers, as it marked a change in perspective regarding story, platforms for delivery and, control. Ten years on and the trickle- down effect is only just beginning to take hold. Producers are now looking to create sustainable film and TV production models from their storyworld and format brands. As technology and the marketplace becomes more sophisticated, more exciting, engaging and profitable projects will result.
Games are the toolkit we use to create. - Henry Jenkins. Taken at the Smithsonian American Arts Museum by Ryan Somma
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“How to Write a Transmedia Production Bible” Online Brand Value by Gary Hayes for Screen Australia • www.alexa.com (free quick search facility) A template for multiplatform producers with responsibility for • www.emarketer.com (platform – subscription) overseeing multiplatform production. • www.compete.com (free 24 hour trial) http://screenaustralia.gov.au/getmedia/2b6459ab-3d05-4607-8fc6- 10e1a8fff13d/Transmedia-prod-bible-template.pdf Other Evaluation Tools
“Moments of Innovation” An interactive installation and research • Google Alerts http://www.google.com/alerts/ project from MIT Open Documentary Lab and IDFA DocLab. • Google Trends http://www.google.com/trends/
An overview of documentary innovation from early forms of representation to the digital age. A must read for All Media creators looking for inspiration. Social Media Management Tools • Hootsuite http://hootsuite.com/ http://momentsofinnovation.mit.edu/ • Tweetdeck http://tweetdeck.com/
• Tweepi http://tweepi.com/